“Is she much changed since you saw her last?”
pursue I presently, with infantile guilelessness;
“was her hair red then? some people say
it used to be black!”
I raise my eyes to his face as I put this gentle query,
in order the better to trace its effect; but the concern
that I see in his countenance is so very much greater
than any that I had intended to have summoned that
I have no sooner hurled my dart than I repent me of
having done it.
“Nancy!” he says, putting one hand under
my chin, and stroking my hair with the other—“am
I going to have a backbiting wife? Child!
child! there was neither hatred nor malice in the
little girl I found sitting at the top of the wall.”
I do not answer.
“Nancy,” he says again, in a voice of
most thorough earnestness, “I have a favor to
ask of you—I know when I put it that
way, that you will not say ‘No;’ if
you do not mind, I had rather you did not abuse Zephine
Huntley!—for the matter of that, I had rather
you did not abuse any one—it does not pay,
and there is no great fun in it; but Zephine specially
not.”
“Why specially?” cry I, breathing
short and speaking again with a quick, raised voice.
“I know that it is a bad plan abusing people,
you need not tell me that, I know it as well
as you do, and I never did it at home, before I married,
never!—none of them ever accused
me of it —I was always quite good-natured
about people, quite; but why she specially?
why is she to be more sacred than any one else?”
“It is an old story,” he answers, passing
his hand across his forehead with what looks to me
like a rather weary gesture and sighing, “I do
not know why I did not tell you before—did
not I ever?—no, by-the-by, I remember I
never did; well, I will tell you now, and then you
will understand!”
“Do not!” cry I, passionately, putting
my fingers in my ears, and growing scarlet, while
the tears rush in mad haste to my eyes, for I imagine
that I well know what is coming. “I do not
want to hear! I had rather not! I hate
old stories.” He looks at me in silent dismay.
“I mean,” say I, seeing that some explanation
is needed, “that I know all about it!—I
have heard it already! I have been told it.”
“Been told it? By whom?”
“Never mind by whom!” reply I, removing
my fingers from my ears, and covering with both hot
hands my hotter face. “I have been
told it! I have heard it, and, what is
more, I will not hear it again!”
When I rose this morning, I did not think that I should
have cried before night; indeed, nothing would have
seemed to me so unlikely. Cry! on the day of
Roger’s first back-coming! absurd! And yet
now the morning is still quite young, and I have wept
abundantly. I am always rather good at crying.
Tears with me do not argue any very profound depth
of affliction. My tears have always been somewhat
near my eyes, a fact well known to the boys, whom
my pearly drops always leave as stolid and unfeeling
as they found them. But the case is different
with Roger. Either he is ignorant, or he has
forgotten the facility with which I weep, and his
distress is proportioned to his ignorance.
