Turns of Fortune | Page 6

that it would have been impossible to fancy any living creature who had felt the sunshine of fourteen summers more charming or tormenting.
"I wish, dear aunt," exclaimed Mabel, one morning, as she sat at her embroidery, the sun shining through the open window upon the abundant glories of her hair, while her aunt sat, as she always did, opposite to her, that she might, when she raised her eyes from off the Italian lesson she was conning for her especial edification, have the happiness of seeing her without an effort; "I wish, dear aunt, you would send that old spinnet out of the room; it looks so odd by the side of my beautiful piano."
"My dear Mabel," replied her aunt, "I have put as much new furniture as you wished into this room, but I cannot part with the old"--
"Rubbish!" added Mabel, snapping her worsted with the impatience of the movement.
"It may be rubbish in your eyes, Mabel, but I have told you before that my dear father desired I should never part with the furniture of the room he died in."
Mabel looked the truth--"that she was not more inclined toward the old furniture on that account;" but she did not say so. "Have you got the key of the old spinnet, aunt? I should like to hear its tone."
"I have never found the key, my dear, though I have often looked for it; I suppose my father lost it. I have danced to its music before now to my mother's playing; but I am sure it has not a tone left."
"I wish you would dance now, dear aunt," exclaimed Mabel, jumping up at the idea; "you never told me you could dance; I never, somehow, fancied you could dance, and I have been obliged to practise my quadrilles with two high-backed chairs and my embroidery frame. Do, dear aunt; put by that book, and dance." It would be impossible to fancy a greater contrast than aunt and niece. Sarah Bond's erect and perfectly flat figure was surmounted by a long head and face, round which an abundance of gray hair was folded; for by no other term can I describe its peculiar dress; her cap plain, but white as snow; and a black silk gown, that had seen its best days, was pinned and primmed on, so as to sit as close as possible to a figure which would have been greatly improved by heavy and abundant drapery. Mabel, lithe and restless, buoyant and energetic, unable even to wish for more luxury or more happiness than she possessed, so that her active mind was forced to employ its longings on trifles, as it really had nothing else to desire; her face was round as those faces are which become oval in time; and her bright laughing eyes sparkled like sunbeams at the bare notion of making "aunt Sarah" take either the place of a high-backed chair, or the embroidery frame in a quadrille. "Do dance," she repeated.
"My dear child, I know as little of your quadrilles as you do of my country dances and reels. No, Mabel; I can neither open the spinnet nor dance quadrilles; so you have been twice refused this morning; a novelty, is it not, my dearest Mabel?"
"But why do you not break open the spinnet? Do break it open, aunt; I want to see the inside of it so much."
"No, Mabel; the lock is a peculiar one, and could not be broken without defacing the marquetre on the cover, which I should not like to do. My poor mother was so proud of that cover, and used to dust and polish it with her own hands."
"What! herself?" exclaimed the pretty Mabel; "why did not her servants do it?"
"Because, my dear, she had but one."
"But one! I remember when my poor mamma had none," sighed Mabel, "and we were so miserable."
"But not from lack of attendants, I think," answered Sarah Bond. "If they are comforts, they are careful ones, and sadly wasteful. We were never so happy as we were then. Your mother and I used to set the milk, and mind the poultry, and make the butter, and cultivate the flower-garden, and help to do the house work; and then in the evening we would run in the meadows, come home laden with wild flowers, and tired as we were by alternate work and play, my dear mother would play on that old instrument, and my poor father sing, and we sisters wound up the evening by a merry dance, your mother and myself trying hard which could keep up the dance longest."
Mabel resumed her embroidery without once speaking. Sarah Bond laid down the book she had been reading, and moved restlessly about; her manner, when either thoughtful or excited, prevented her features from