CHAPTER XVI.

_MISS THURSTON._

FOR a week or two Miss Hardy suffered a good deal, and required constant care and attention; but after that time matters grew better. A very famous surgeon, a cousin of Miss Hardy's, came down to see her, and he and Dr. Elsmore between them contrived an arrangement which enabled the patient to sit up in bed—a great relief. The case was a simple one and doing as well as possible, and Rhoda received a blunt compliment on her handiness from Doctor Douglass:

"You understand yourself, I see. I like to see people's brains reach to the ends of their fingers."

Rhoda found her quiet life far from disagreeable. She read aloud to Miss Hardy a part of every day, she worked at her algebra, and took a certain pleasure in rambling over the great solitary house.

"You must not let yourself get dull and lonely," said Miss Hardy. "How will you manage to amuse yourself?"

Rhoda hesitated a moment.

"After all, it can do no harm to ask," she said to herself; and then added aloud, "Miss Hardy, if you don't object—if it would not disturb you—if I might practise on the piano over in the farther class-room—"

"Certainly," answered Miss Hardy—"practise as much as you like; only I think you had better use the piano in the little music-room at the head of the stairs. It is a better instrument, and you will be within hearing of the bell. I remember Mrs. Ferrand's telling me you were fond of music. You will find plenty of music there in the little cupboard at the side of the fireplace."

Rhoda was now indeed happy. She made her selections of music, and went up stairs feeling almost as if she were in a dream. The piano was a very good one, and Miss Hardy listened with pleasure as Rhoda played and sung.

"She has real talent," she said to herself. "Not one girl in twenty plays with such expression, and not one in a hundred has such a voice. She must certainly have lessons. It is a shame to let such talent be thrown away."

It was not Miss Hardy's way to act in a hurry. She waited for two or three weeks, letting Rhoda practise every day, hearing her read aloud, and talking with her on all sorts of subjects. One day, when Rhoda brought her book as usual, Miss Hardy said,—

"Never mind the history now, Rhoda. Get your work; I want to talk to you. But what have you there so very pretty?" she asked as Rhoda unrolled a parcel of snow-white wool and a pair of long slender needles.

"I was going to ask you about it," said Rhoda. "I was in Mrs. F—'s store looking at some little knitted shirts, and she asked me if I knew any one who could make them. I told her I could, and that I knew a much prettier pattern than hers. She said she would pay me a dollar a pair, and I told her I would like to knit them if you had no objection."

"Not the least," answered Miss Hardy. "It is very pretty work. Do you know, Rhoda, you have a very straightforward way of telling a story?"

"Aunt Hannah taught me that," said Rhoda. "She used to say, when I would begin to tell something, 'Now, don't begin in the middle. Stop and think what you want to say.'"

"Aunt Hannah must have been a very wise woman. But now give me your attention, for I want to talk about a very serious matter. I understand from my sister and niece, as well as from some things you have said yourself, that you are very desirous to have a regular education?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered Rhoda, her heart beating fast. "It has been the greatest desire of my life ever since I was twelve years old."

"How much have you studied already?"

"I have been well drilled in the common-school studies," answered Rhoda, considering. "I have been through the arithmetic and grammar two or three times, and I have studied American history a little. Besides that, I have been through three books of Euclid and as far as quadratic equations in algebra."

"Did you do that in school?"

"No, ma'am. After I came back to 'The Home,' I used to recite to Miss Brown, and while I was at Mrs. Ferrand's I went on by myself. I worked most at nay algebra, because I wanted to help Isa."

"What music-lessons have you had?"

"I learned to read notes and sing church music at sight in the singing-school, and Miss Emily Willson taught me the notes on the piano and how to play a little; and once, when we were visiting at Mr. Evans's, Aunt Annie gave me some lessons. We had no piano at home, but I used to practise on Miss Emily's till they went away. Father always said he meant to buy me a piano."

"Whom do you mean by 'father'?" asked Miss Hardy. "I thought you were an orphan."

Rhoda gave Miss Hardy a short account of her life.

"It was a most heartless and shameful proceeding," said Miss Hardy, who had a capacity for virtuous indignation. "I never heard anything worse."

"I believe I should think so if any one else had been the sufferer. And I don't think I did anything to deserve it, Miss Hardy. Of course I sometimes did wrong, like other children, but I do think I was as good as the average, and I am sure not one of the children I knew took more pains to please their parents than I did, or loved them more."

"I have no doubt of it. But even if you had not been as good as the average, it would have been no excuse for turning you off."

"So it seems to me," remarked Rhoda. "It seems to me that people are as much bound to children they adopt as to their own by birth. I remember, when we were at Aunt Annie's, a lady's saying to her,—

"'My husband and myself adopted a child one time, and had her name changed, and all, but as she grew older, she showed so many of her inherited tendencies that we had to let her go.'

"'Suppose she had been your own child, and had showed the same tendencies, would you have turned her off?' asked Uncle Evans.

"But the lady thought that was different."

"Yes, I dare say. But, Rhoda, not to pursue that matter any further, suppose I were to take you into the school on the same footing as the other scholars, giving you the advantage of the professor's lessons in music, could you contrive to clothe yourself, do you think?"

The world seemed to turn round with Rhoda for a moment at this question. Then she steadied herself by picking up a dropped stitch, and answered, quietly,—

"Yes, ma'am, I think so. I have a good stock of clothes, and I have seventy-five dollars in the bank at Milby and twenty-five here. I should think, with what I have, that ought to dress me for two years. I should have to be very plain, of course, but I think I could be decent."

"I have no doubt of it. How old are you?"

"I was sixteen last Christmas."

"Well, suppose you make the most of your time for three years; do you think at the end of that time you could be ready to take hold and help Mrs. Marshall and myself in the school? Because if you do, I think we will try it."

Rhoda tried to speak, but the words would not come. Instead came a great burst of thankful, joyful tears.

"Tut, tut!" said Miss Hardy. "That will never do. Don't you know the doctor said I must be kept quiet?"

"I am very silly," said Rhoda, striving to compose herself; "but oh, Miss Hardy, if you knew how I have longed for such a chance when I have seen the scholars going to their lessons! I felt as if I would work like a slave only to have their opportunities. I have tried every way to save money, hoping I might get enough to pay my board at least a year while I went to the public schools. But I never thought of a chance like this."

"It has been no sudden resolution with me," remarked Miss Hardy. "I have been thinking of it ever since you came here, and observing you closely."

"I am glad I did not know it," said Rhoda. "Miss Hardy, I don't know how to thank you."

"You may thank me by going down town and finding some fresh lemons," said Miss Hardy, smiling. "To-morrow we will have a little examination, to see where it will be best for you to begin."

A more thankful heart was not under the sun than Rhoda's that day. She would not even go out for her walk till she had shut herself into her little room, and there poured out her heart to her heavenly Father and dedicated her life and talents anew to him and his service.

"It's all right—just as it ought to be," was Aunt Sarah's comment. "I always knowed you was meant for a young lady the first minute you came into the house,—you had such polite, genteel ways of speaking, and eating, and all; and when you was fixed for Sunday, there wasn't one in the school looked any nicer than you—not a bit like that loose-ended Hetty, with her great greasy braids of false hair, and her dress hitched up and stuck out forty different ways, and her hair frizzled up like my old feather brush that Tony stuck in the fire. You couldn't make a lady of her, not if you was to work at her for ever."

"You know what a lady is, don't you, Aunt Sarah?"

"Well, I ought to, honey. I've always lived in the first families in Cumberland county, and my mother before me. Yes, indeed, I know, and I am just as glad as if you was my own."

The next day but one Rhoda brought a letter from the post-office which she felt sure was directed in Mrs. Ferrand's hand, and she lingered in the room while Miss Hardy opened and read it.

"Mr. and Mrs. Ferrand and Isa are coming here day after to-morrow," said Miss Hardy; "we must have everything in order, Rhoda."

"Are they going to stay here?" asked Rhoda, divided between joy at the prospect of seeing Isa once more and a certain dread of meeting Mr. Ferrand.

"No. My sister says that, considering the state of the case, Mr. Ferrand thinks they had better take rooms at the hotel, and perhaps it will be as well."

"I shall be so glad to see Isa again," said Rhoda. "I never was so fond of any girl as of her. How I do wish she could come here to school! I should be perfectly happy if she could."

"And I wish so too," said Miss Hardy. "However, I think you will find plenty of friends among our scholars."

"I was not thinking of myself so much as of Isa," said Rhoda. "It doesn't seem right to say so, but, Miss Hardy, Isa isn't one bit happy at home."

"So I have feared."

"It isn't Mrs. Ferrand's fault," continued Rhoda—"she is almost the loveliest person I ever saw—but Mr. Ferrand doesn't understand Isa. He wants her to be a scholar, and it is not in her. She works harder than any slave, and, after all, she doesn't succeed. That Mr. Sampson gives her the longest lessons—just think! Six propositions in geometry—and then the minute her lessons are done, she must go at her music, and she has no more ear than—than the tongs," said Rhoda, rather at a loss for a comparison.

"But how does she learn her lessons?"

"She doesn't; that's the worst of it. The girls at school like her and feel sorry for her, so they do her sums for her and let her copy their exercises. Isa knows that isn't right, and it makes her unhappy; but her father is so displeased and so mortified if she has a bad report that she keeps on doing it. Then she isn't well any of the time."

"How is she unwell?"

"She has a headache and a backache, and she is so nervous she can't sleep, and she is tired all the time. Besides that, I don't know but it was my fancy, but the last time I saw her I thought she seemed queer. She was so absent, and every now and then such a dull, vacant kind of look would come over her face, and for half a minute she would seem to forget what she was saying."

"That is bad," said Miss Hardy.

"Dr. Morton told Mr. Ferrand that he ought to take her out of school last spring," continued Rhoda, "but he thought there was no need of it. Mr. Ferrand doesn't approve of amusement. He says change of employment is the best recreation, and that if one is tired riding the best way to rest is to walk."

"Mr. Ferrand is a wise man," said Miss Hardy. "I think we will try to have Doctor Douglass happen down while Isa is here. Mr. Ferrand is an old college friend of the doctor's, and thinks highly of him. Did you bring the daily paper?"

"Yes, ma'am; here it is," said Rhoda, taking it from her basket.

"And here is a letter in it, and for you," said Miss Hardy, handing it to Rhoda.

"Oh, from Miss Carpenter. I am so glad," exclaimed Rhoda. "She hardly ever gets time to write."

She read her letter, and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"What now? No bad news, I hope?" said Miss Hardy.

"No, ma'am—at least I hope not. Miss Carpenter says that an old gentleman has been at 'The Home' inquiring for me, and by her description it must be Mr. Weightman. She says he wanted to know where I was living and what was my real name before I was called Rhoda Bowers. I can't think what he wants of it."

"Perhaps he means to leave you a fortune," said Miss Hardy.

Rhoda laughed heartily at the idea.

"More likely he wants to do me an ill turn," said she. "I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he were to write to you telling you what a bad girl I was."

"He may save himself the trouble," said Miss Hardy. "I know bad girls when I see them, and good girls too. But, Rhoda, while I think of it, what is your real name?"

"Thurston—Rhoda Mary Thurston. Mrs. Mulford told me all about my parents. She said my father was a good mechanic, but he was always unlucky, and finally died by a fall from the roof of a building. I was born and my mother died at 'The Home.' Mrs. Mulford said mother was one of the best women she ever knew, and very well-educated. She had charge of the nursery, but she only lived two years after I was born, and I don't remember her at all, but they all say I am like her."

"I think you had better take your real name again," said Miss Hardy.

"I am sure I would much rather," answered Rhoda, flushing. "I have tried not to have any hard feeling toward Mr. and Mrs. Bowers, but I don't like to think of them."

"Very well. Henceforth you are Miss Thurston. I shall introduce you by that name, and put it down in the catalogue."

"But you will let me take care of you all the same?" said Rhoda, anxiously; "you won't want anybody else?"

"Oh no; never fear," answered Miss Hardy, smiling. "You are too good a nurse to be put aside."