CHAPTER I

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"I WONDER what keeps Kitty!" said Mrs. Tremain.

It was growing late of an October afternoon, and it was indeed quite time for Kitty to be at home from school. Mrs. Tremain had been twice to the door to look for her daughter, and still no Kitty was to be seen.

"I suspect some of the school-girls have coaxed her away!" answered Cousin Tilly. "That's the worst of Kitty. She can be coaxed into doing any thing. She is just her father over again, in that as well as in her looks!"

"I am sure I hope not!" said Mrs. Tremain, with an anxious expression. "I had hoped Kitty was gaining more firmness!"

And again she went to the door to look for Kitty. This time she saw her coming slowly with her hat pulled far down over her face, and her movements expressing any thing but high spirits. Mrs. Tremain went down to the gate to meet her daughter.

"Why, Kitty, how late you are!" said she. "Do you know it is after five o'clock, and almost dark?" Then, catching a glimpse of Kitty's swollen and tearstained face, she exclaimed, "But, my dear child, what is the matter? What has happened?"

"Miss Oliver kept me after school!" replied Kitty, bursting into tears, and sobbing as if her heart would break. "She has given me three bad marks, and all these sums to do besides. And it was not my fault, either, and I think she is too bad?"

"Hush, hush, my dear! Don't say any thing about it just now, but go up-stairs, wash your face and make yourself neat for tea; after that I will hear the whole story. Come, now, don't cry any more, but do as I bid you, and come down as soon as you can. Cousin Tilly has been getting something very nice for your supper!"

Mrs. Tremain spoke very decidedly, though kindly and soothingly, and Kitty knew she must obey. She went up to her own pretty, nicely-furnished little room, and, putting away her cloak and hat, she drenched her face and head with cool water till the traces of her tears were removed and her short black hair curled up as tight as that of her aunt Baldwin's French poodle. She had hardly succeeded in reducing it to some sort of order when Cousin Tilly called to her from the foot of the stairs—

"Come, Kitty! Tea is ready and the waffles baked brown as a berry, just as you like 'em!"

"Cousin Tilly is real good, and so is mother!" was Kitty's reflection as she came down-stairs. "If it was some people, they would begin scolding me at once. I wonder if it was my fault, after all!"

All through tea-time Mrs. Tremain made no allusion to Kitty's school troubles, but chatted pleasantly about other things—about who had called, about Mrs. Benson's new twin babies, and Aunt Baldwin's letter—sometimes addressing her remarks to Kitty and sometimes to Cousin Tilly, who answered in dry, concise sentences, after her usual manner.

"Now, Kitty!" said Mrs. Tremain, when tea was over. "You and I will wash up the dishes and let Cousin Tilly go over to Mrs. Benson's and help to get her settled for the night. Olly Anne Phillips is going to sit up with her, but she cannot come before nine o'clock."

"Why does not Mrs. Benson have a regular nurse, mother, as Aunt Baldwin did when Georgy was born?" asked Kitty.

"For two reasons, my dear. In the first place, she cannot afford it. And in the second place, no such person is to be had. Mrs. Smith is nursing poor Mrs. Burchard over at the Corners, and Olly Anne Phillips cannot leave home in the day-time. So the neighbours must join together and take care of her as well as they are able. 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' you know, daughter."

"I am sure it is no great burden to wash up the tea-things," said Kitty. "I should like to do it very often, only Cousin Tilly will not let me for fear I should not turn all the cup handles the same way, I believe," added Kitty, laughing.

Her mother laughed too.

"Cousin Tilly has her little ways, but we should hardly know how to live without her," said she. "We must mind what we are about, or else she will scold us when she comes home."

While Mrs. Tremain and her daughter are gathering up and washing the cups and saucers, we will learn a little about who they were. Mrs. Tremain was a widow, with one little girl. She had had other children, but had lost them. Her husband had inherited a large property from his father, but he, too, was gone, and most of his property with him—all indeed, but the share which old Mr. Tremain's kindness or prudence had settled upon his daughter-in-law. Part of this property consisted in a comfortable, old-fashioned brick-house with a good garden and some pasturelands situated in the little village of Holford. Here Mrs. Tremain had come to live after the loss of her husband. And here she still lived, economically indeed, but in great comfort, and even elegance. The neighbours considered her rich, because she "lived on the interest of her money," and did not work for a living.

A good deal of Mrs. Tremain's comfort was owing to Cousin Tilly, as Mrs. Tremain and Kitty called her—Miss Crocker, as the minister and the neighbours said. Nobody knew exactly how Cousin Tilly was related to Mrs. Tremain. She did her work and received wages like any other servant, but she was treated with the greatest respect by both mother and daughter, sitting with them at the table and in church, and introduced to visitors as "my cousin, Miss Crocker." She never went visiting, nor wrote any letters, nor seemed to have any friends outside of Holford. People could not understand it at all, and yet it was no great mystery.

Miss Crocker was an orphan, with a little—a very little—property of her own, not enough to support her. She was not accomplished, nor highly educated in any way, and it did not suit her health to sit and sew. So, like a wise woman, she determined to do for a living what she could do best, namely, housework, which she understood to perfection. She had lived with her cousin, Mrs. Tremain, for many years, and found herself very happy. She earned enough to clothe herself comfortably in the plain way which she preferred; and her little property meantime was accumulating and making a comfortable fund against a time of helplessness and old age, in spite of the liberal way in which she gave to all good objects.

Mrs. Tremain had a sister-in-law—Kitty's Aunt Baldwin—who was very rich, and lived in a fine house in a fashionable street in New York. According to the ordinary belief in such matters, this lady might be represented as very proud, frivolous and hard-hearted, looking down upon her poorer sister-in-law, and treating her with great contempt. Such, however, was not the case. Mrs. Baldwin was a good woman in every sense of the word—humble, charitable, and godly. She was very fond of Mrs. Tremain, and maintained such a close correspondence with her that the gossips at Holford post-office wondered what she could possibly find to say in all the letters she sent. She had visited Mrs. Tremain several times, and on these occasions she seemed to fall at once into the ways of the family. She went to the village store on errands, called at the butcher's, and clearly understood the difference between round and porterhouse steak. And if she dressed rather expensively, the expense was not of a kind to be appreciated by most of the ladies of Holford.

"She thinks any thing is good enough for Holford," said Mrs. Daskin to Miss Parkins, whom she met at the Wednesday evening lecture. "Just look at that bonnet! Not a mite of a flower on it, and just that strip of black lace over the crown!"

"And just look at her shawl!" returned Miss Parkins to Mrs. Daskin. "It must be as old as the hills! I wonder how much it cost when it was new."

"About a thousand dollars, I should say," said Mrs. Brown, the lawyer's wife, who knew a little more about shawls than Miss Parkins, and who could not resist the temptation of giving a snub to the gossiping little milliner.

"Laws me! You don't mean to say that is a real India shawl!" exclaimed Miss Parkins in a tone of awe. "Well, to be sure, there is a kind of look about it. I might have known she wouldn't wear any thing cheap."

"There you are mistaken, Miss Parkins," returned Mrs. Brown. "That very dress she has on cost only thirty cents a yard. I happen to know because I asked her the price, meaning to send for one like it."

Mrs. Tremain's daughter was very fond of Aunt Baldwin. Kitty was a bright, lively girl of thirteen or thereabout, but usually passed for younger than she really was, being small, round, and rosy, with short black hair which would not do any thing but curl up into little crisp rings. Kitty was "her father over again," said Cousin Tilly. She was, on the whole, a good girl—amiable, truthful, fond of her books, and with a hearty desire at the bottom of her little heart to serve and please her heavenly Father. Yet, with all these good qualities, Kitty was often in trouble, and gave her mother a great deal of anxiety.

"Now, Kitty," said her mother, when every thing was washed and put away, and she was ready to sit down with her work—"now, Kitty, tell me all about it. Why did Miss Oliver keep you after school?"

"Because I had not done any of my sums, mamma, and I 'could' not do them, either, because I had no slate-pencil."

"But how was that, Kitty? It was only last Wednesday that I gave you two long slate-pencils, and a lead-pencil besides! What has become of them all?"

"Well, mamma, I left one slate-pencil at home, because I don't always remember to bring it with me, and I broke the other in two, and—and—I lent one piece to Fanny Daskin, and one piece to Lizzy Gates, and they did not give them back to me!"

"I thought Miss Oliver had made a strict rule against lending and borrowing in school. I am sure she told me so, and I thought it an excellent measure on her part. Does she not enforce it?"

"Yes, mamma: that was how I got my bad marks. I told her I had lent my pencils, and she said that was no excuse at all. She marked Fanny and Lizzie too, and now they are angry at me, and say it was all my fault."

"I dare say!" replied Mrs. Tremain. "That is usually the way people are served by those who make tools of them. You know the rule. Why did you not obey it?"

"But, mamma, they asked me!"

"What of that? You owed obedience to Miss Oliver, and not to Lizzy and Fanny. I must say I think Miss Oliver was right. But, Kitty, you say you left one of your pencils at home. What has become of the nice wooden-cased slate-pencil with the extra points which Aunt Baldwin sent you? I told you to keep that to use at home!"

Kitty began to twist her apron strings and to look very much confused, while her cheeks grew as scarlet as her stockings. Mrs. Tremain guessed the truth at once.

"Kitty! You have not given 'that' away surely! After all I said to you! Oh, Kitty, Kitty!"

"Well, mamma, I did not mean to, but Fanny Daskin saw it, and she begged for it so. She would not give me any peace! Indeed, mamma, I am sorry you feel so bad about it. I hated to part with it, too, but I did not think you would care so much, and Fanny kept begging—"

"It is not the value of the slate-pencil I care for Kitty—though in giving away Aunt Baldwin's presents you have been unkind to her and disobedient to me—it is this new evidence that you do not in the least get the better of your greatest fault—a fault which was the ruin of your poor father, and is likely to be the ruin of yourself!"

"The ruin! Oh, mamma!"

"Yes, my poor child. I must say it. You do not at all appreciate the greatness of this fault, Kitty, nor the consequences to which it is sure to lead." Mrs. Tremain paused in her work and walked to the window, while Kitty sat still, covered with confusion at her mother's unusual severity.

"You are not at all aware of the seriousness of this fault, Kitty," repeated Mrs. Tremain, returning to her seat: "in fact I am not sure that you consider it a fault at all. I am rather disposed to think, on the contrary, that you pride yourself upon your generous open-hearted disposition, which makes you (as you imagine) unable to say 'no' to any body."

Kitty hung her head. Her mother had, as usual, read her thoughts exactly.

"But, mamma, don't you think it is a good thing to be generous?" she asked.

"It is a far better thing to be just, Kitty. And it is far better to be really generous than merely to wish to be thought so. Do you think it was generosity which made you lend your pencils, this morning?"

Kitty did not reply, but in her heart she did think so.

"Whom do you love best—Fanny Daskin or Miss Oliver?" asked Mrs. Tremain.

"Oh, mamma! Miss Oliver, of course."

"And whose respect and regard would you rather possess—your teacher's or Fanny's?"

"My teacher's, mamma."

"I don't think so, Kitty!"

Kitty looked surprised.

"You say you love Miss Oliver better than Fanny, yet, to oblige Fanny, you treated her with disrespect and unkindness."

"It was not so much to oblige Fanny as to get rid of her," said Kitty, candidly. "She does tease so; she will not let me alone till I give her what she wants."

"Then it was not generosity, after all, but mere selfish desire of ease," said Mrs. Tremain. "Do you know the reason why Fanny teases you so?"

"No, mamma, unless it is because she knows that I always give up to her. She never goes to Rosa Burns, or any of the other girls, as she does to me. She says they are so stingy and I am so good-natured."

"Yes, that is what she says to your face. Behind your back she says—

"'Kitty is so soft, she can be coaxed into any thing!'

"I know she does, because I heard her myself."

"The mean thing!" exclaimed Kitty, flushing with anger and shame.

"She has been brought up in that way, which is some excuse for her," said Mrs. Tremain. "Her mother and father have always preferred sponging on other people to working honestly for a living. Mr. Daskin preyed on your father as long as he lived, and he owes us at this minute more than a thousand dollars, not one cent of which will he ever pay. It was in that way your father lost his property. I do not like to blame him in your hearing, but it is right that you should know his faults, in order to avoid them. A year after we were married, your father had eighty thousand dollars of his own, free from all incumbrance. Before he died, he had lost every cent of it, and died in debt!"

"How, mamma?"

"Because, my dear, he never could say 'no.' If a man came and asked him to lend him a hundred or even a thousand dollars, though the security might be ever so bad, or altogether wanting, he could not bear to refuse. If he were asked to become an endorser for an acquaintance, he would not say no, though he knew his family might suffer in consequence. In this way his entire property was frittered away, and but for the sum your grandfather settled upon myself, we should have been left destitute."

"The same disposition showed itself in other ways. Your father never would deny one of his children any thing it cried for, no matter how improper or hurtful it might be. Your brother Oswald's death was occasioned by his father giving him a large, hard apple to eat, just as he was recovering from a fever. I had gone to lie down, and the nurse went out of the room in order to prepare the child's broth. When she came back, Oswald was just finishing the apple. In fifteen minutes he went into a fit, and soon afterwards died."

Mrs. Tremain was silent for a few minutes: Kitty was crying heartily. "But that was not the worst!" resumed Mrs. Tremain. "Your father was not naturally fond of dissipation. I think, for a long time after he was married, he would have preferred a quiet evening at home to any other kind of amusement. But his easy disposition and his wealth made him a mark to those whose business it was to lie in wait for souls and to catch men. They flattered him, called him a generous, open-hearted fellow, and so forth. He could not make up his mind to refuse when asked to drink a glass, to share a bottle of champagne, to take a hand at cards, or to play a game at billiards! What was the end? He died a ruined, disgraced man, from the effects of drink and other vices. The only comfort I have is in the thought that he died penitent.

"It has cost me not a little to repeat this sad story to you, Kitty! I never meant you should know it, but the incident of to-day, taken in connection with so many others which have happened lately, has convinced me of the necessity of giving you a solemn warning. You are, as Cousin Tilly often says, 'your father over again.' You have inherited all his good qualities, and with them that fatal disposition and that tendency to be governed by any one who will take the pains to coax and flatter you, which were his ruin: and I tremble for you!"

"Indeed, mamma, I really will try to do better in future," said Kitty. "I know I do sometimes let the girls lead me into scrapes. I do so hate to disoblige anybody!"

"That is a selfish feeling, Kitty, and nothing else. You are led to do wrong just to spare yourself the pain of resistance, and every instance of such weakness leads the way to another. It is only a little while since you got into sad disgrace by writing Lizzy Gates' composition for her. You know it was wrong—that you were, in effect, not only telling a lie yourself, but helping Lizzy to tell one. You were disobeying your mother and your teacher, and displeasing your heavenly Father. You knew all this, yet you deliberately acted against your own conscience because you could not bear to say no to a girl whom you do not respect, and who does not care for you. I dare say Lizzy did not ask Rose Brown to write her composition!"

"No, mamma, she never thought of it. Rose is ready to help the other girls too, but she never will break a rule for anybody, and when once she sets her foot down, you might as well attempt to move the school-house. All the girls know that well enough."

"Well, if you had decidedly refused to write Lizzy's composition for her, she would have known better than to ask you to do so again."

"I did say I would not at first," said Kitty, "but—"

"Well, but what?"

"She teased me so, and said she should think me as mean and stingy as Rose Brown!"

"And what harm would that have done you? Or, which is the worst—to be mean or merely to be thought so, and that, too, by some one whose opinion is not worth anything?

"I shall say no more at present, Kitty," continued Mrs. Tremain. "I do not know that all I have said will do any good. I am not at all hopeful—not so much so as I ought to be, perhaps. My experience has not tended to make me so. I can only pray for you! Now get your slate and do your sums, as Miss Oliver told you!"

"Won't you help me, mamma?" asked Kitty. "Oh, do, please! Miss Oliver said I must not come to school till I had them all finished and written out, and if I do not go to-morrow, I shall not have a chance for the prize!"

"I cannot help it, Kitty! I am very sorry for you, but I cannot help you. I have done so too often already. From henceforth I shall leave you to bear the consequences of your folly, till you learn to have a little firmness and decision of character."

Kitty wept afresh, but she presently reflected that crying would do her no good.

So she wiped her eyes and set about her lessons. With all her diligence, however, she could not finish them that night. It was not till the next afternoon that she was able to present herself at school, and thus all chance of obtaining the prize was lost to her.

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