CHAPTER II.

_AUNT HANNAH._

AUNT HANNAH WEIGHTMAN lived in a little red house near the edge of the mill-pond, as it was called, though it was little more than a widening of the Outlet, caused by the dam which supplied Mr. Francis's mills. The situation was a very pretty one. On one side of the house lay Aunt Hannah's garden, green with well-conditioned vegetables and gay with flowers, not only of the commoner but also of the rarer kinds, for she was one of those people for whom everything grows. On the other side lay three or four acres of pasture-land, enough, with some help, to keep Aunt Hannah's white cow, most wonderful of milkers both for quantity and quality, and where grew in their season the finest mushrooms in the country.

The "door-yard" of the little dwelling was crowded with lilacs and other blossoming shrubs; the plain board fence and rough stone walls were covered with Virginia creepers, clematis, and morning-glories, and the turf was so neat and green as to give rise to a report among the school-boys that Aunt Hannah dressed it every morning with a hairbrush and a fine-tooth comb. The house was dark red, with rather dusky and faded green blinds. There were three rooms besides the kitchen below and two above; and as Aunt Hannah had inherited the household goods both of mother and grandmother, there was no lack of solid, respectable, old-fashioned furniture.

"How pretty it looks!" said Rhoda to herself as she came across the pasture and stopped a moment to bestow a pat on old Snowball. "It ought to be put in a picture. One could tell who lived there by the outside of the house. It looks just like Aunt Hannah herself. What lots of button mushrooms! I shall have a fine time with them when my work is done."

As Rhoda drew near the side window, she heard within what boded no good to her pleasant afternoon—namely, the sharp, thin, and growling voice of Mr. Jacob Weightman, Aunt Hannah's brother, of whom she stood in great fear. Now I am aware that very few voices could succeed in being sharp and growling at the same time, but Uncle Jacob's accomplished this feat.

"Oh dear!" thought Rhoda. "There goes my nice visit. He will just stay and scold all the afternoon, I dare say. I wish I hadn't put on my new dress. He will be sure to say something about it. I mean to go round to the back door and wait; perhaps he will go away some time or other."

Rhoda sat down on the step at the back kitchen door, and occupied herself alternately in watching the lights and shadows on the stream and in playing with the white Persian kitten Fuzzyball, which romped about the yard, while her equally white and long-haired mother sat couched by Rhoda's side in all the calm dignity befitting a lady who had come all the way from Bombay.

As Rhoda sat on the step she could not help hearing through the window parts of Uncle Jacob's exhortation.

"It is all nonsense, Hannah," she heard him say, "perfect nonsense, for you to take up so much house-room. The house is arranged just right for two families, and it is too bad to be so extravagant. You could live in the east half, if you must keep house, and rent the other part for a dollar a week. It is quite large enough—quite."

"I don't think so," answered Aunt Hannah, quietly. "I like my house to myself and I never yet saw the roof large enough to cover two families."

"Then there is that cow," continued Art Weightman, disregarding the interruption, "Where is the sense of your keeping a cow?"

"To give milk," answered Aunt Hannah.

"To give milk, indeed!" said Uncle Jacob, in a tone as if Miss Hannah had said the cow was good to read aloud or to calculate the longitude. "As if you wanted a cow to give milk! Why, you can't use more than a quart a day at the outside, and what becomes of the rest, I want to know? I don't hear of your selling any."

Aunt Hannah did not seem to feel obliged to gratify her brother's curiosity, for she remained silent.

"Umph!" said Rhoda to herself. "Perhaps if he should ask Widow Makay and poor old Aunty Sarah, they might tell him something about the milk; though I don't exactly see what business it is of his."

But Uncle Jacob was continuing his lecture:

"The fact is, Hannah, you are no manager at all; you don't know how to save. The right way would be for you to break up housekeeping and board somewhere, for two or three dollars a week, fat and kill that old cow, and rent your house and land. Then it would bring you in a good, handsome sum, whereas now you don't get your living out of it; and you might lay up money every year. Why, you might die a rich woman if you would only be guided by me and take care of things."

"Possibly, Jacob, but I prefer living a rich woman," said Aunt Hannah. "I have enough as it is to make me very comfortable, and to help others a little, and I don't exactly see what good it would do me to die rich, unless I could take my money along with me, which does not seem very practicable. I like to have my own house over my head and my own land around me; and as I have nobody dependent upon me, I don't see that I have any particular motive for saving more money than will serve to take care of me if I should be long sick, and bury me when I am dead; and that I have done already. So you see I feel quite easy on that score."

"You might think of somebody besides yourself," said Uncle Jacob. "There is that boy of John Bowers's."

"Oh, he is likely to be well enough off," said Aunt Hannah. "If I were to save, it would not be for the boy, but for the girl."

"The girl is no relation to you, or them either," growled Mr. Weightman. "She has never done work enough to pay for her board, and she never will. It has all been a piece of nonsense from the taking of her in the first place to the present time. They ought to have taught her to work, and kept her at it, instead of sending her to school and dressing her up as fine as a lady. Why, Mr. Shepherd's bound-girl does more than half the work, and she is only twelve years old. Mrs. Shepherd says she can do quite a large washing now."

Boiling over with indignation, Rhoda jumped up and came into the kitchen, knocking down a pail as she did so and making a tremendous clatter. As she was picking it up, Aunt Hannah opened the inner door:

"Are you there, child. I thought I heard somebody come in a while ago. Have you been sitting here all the time?"

"Yes," said Rhoda. "Aunt Hannah, I didn't mean to listen, but I could not help hearing."

"Never mind, dear; there is no harm done."

"Listeners never hear any good of themselves," said Uncle Jacob, with an ill-natured sneer.

"That depends on whom they listen to, Uncle Jacob," answered Rhoda, in her vexation committing two offences—one in answering at all, and the other in saying "Uncle." "One might listen to Aunt Hannah all day, and never hear ill either of himself or anybody else."

"There! Never mind," interposed Aunt Hannah. "Don't you want to take the basket and see if you can find any mushrooms? They ought to be plenty after the rains last night. There! Never mind, dear," she whispered again, patting Rhoda's hot cheek with her soft withered hand. "Run away a little. It will be all right when you come back, and we will have a nice time together."

From her earliest childhood Rhoda had learned to obey, and she never thought of disputing with Aunt Hannah. She took the basket and went out to the pasture, followed by an exasperating laugh from Uncle Jacob which certainly did not tend to make her cheeks any cooler.

"Impudent little piece!" said he.

"She is not impudent, Jacob," answered Aunt Hannah, with more than common decision, "but she is sensitive and high-spirited, and you provoked her. Rhoda is very far above listening, or tattling, either."

"Of course she is a paragon," said Uncle Jacob, rising and taking his hat; "charity children always are, I believe, according to the Sunday-school books. Well, sister Hannah, I must bid you good-day, since you have so much more agreeable company on hand. If you make up your mind to rent your place, I can find you a good tenant. I advise you to think over what I have said."

"On the contrary, I shall forget it just as soon as I can," thought Aunt Hannah, but she did not say so; being one of those fortunate people who can keep their thoughts to themselves.

She stood looking after her brother for a moment, and then went into her bedroom and shut the door. When she came out, the cloud of vexation had passed from her fair, aged face, though she still looked somewhat sad. She put on a broad hat, and taking a basket, went out to join Rhoda in her search for mushrooms.

In the course of an hour both baskets were filled to the brim, and Rhoda's straw hat besides, and the gatherers returned to the house and sat down in the kitchen, Aunt Hannah tying on a large calico apron over her dress.

"Now I will show you how to do the edge to your shirts, and then you shall finish them while I prepare my mushrooms," said she. "These little buttons will make beautiful pickles, and the large ones will do for catsup. They are the finest we have had this year."

"Isn't it odd," said Rhoda, "that mushrooms growing in the pastures of Lake County should be helping to educate a little girl in China?"

"No more so than that silk grown in China should help to clothe a little girl living in Lake County," answered Aunt Hannah.

"Well, perhaps not. How much money have you made by your mushrooms first and last?"

"I don't know, my dear; I have it all down in a book, but I don't recollect the amount. It varies with different years. Last year was a bad season for the mushrooms, and this is a good one; but I have never failed to make my thirty dollars but once."

"What did you do then?" asked Rhoda.

"I made it up in another way."

"If you had put all that in the bank, now, you would have saved quite a sum by this time," said Rhoda, with a mischievous smile. "Why don't you?"

"I think it is safer where it is," answered Aunt Hannah, dryly. "It would never do for me to begin to save in that way; I should grow too much in earnest about it."

"You, Aunt Hannah?"

"Yes, dear. I am naturally very much in earnest and inclined to persevere in what I undertake; and besides, it is in me to be fond of money for its own sake. I should never dare to make it an object."

"But all rich people are not stingy or mean or grasping, Aunt Hannah. I am sure Uncle Evans is not."

"No, indeed. He is just the man to be rich, for he gives out to all around him. It is not the being rich that hurts people, child remember that; it is the trusting in uncertain riches that makes the entrance hard to the kingdom. It is not money, but the love of money, that is the root of all evil. The world does us no harm so long as we keep it at arm's length. It only hurts us when we let it get inside our hearts, and the poor, and especially folks in moderate circumstances, may do so, perhaps, quite as much as the rich. I know plenty of women in this little village who spend far more time and thought, and, according to their means, more money, on their dress than your aunt Evans does on hers."

Rhoda was silent, thinking that this was the case with her own mother, and wondering whether she were one of the people in moderate circumstances who were in Aunt Hannah's mind. But she quickly dismissed the idea, and began on one of the two subjects which she had, as it were, brought from home to talk over with Aunt Hannah:

"Aunt Hannah, there are two things that trouble me."

"Only two?" asked Aunt Hannah.

"Why, no—only two that I know of," answered Rhoda, considering; "only two of any importance, I believe."

"And one of them, perhaps, is not so very important," said Aunt Hannah. "Are you thinking about what you heard my brother saying this afternoon? You mustn't let that worry you."

"Oh, I don't," said Rhoda; "only I am sorry I offended him. I know he doesn't like to have me call him 'Uncle,' and I am sorry I answered him back. However, I dare say he will never think of it again; I am too insignificant to trouble him."

Aunt Hannah sighed. She was pretty sure her brother would think of it again, and she knew that nothing which crossed his wishes or designs was too insignificant to vex him.

"Since I have guessed wrong, I won't try to guess again. I will let you tell me your two troubles."

"Well, then," said Rhoda, "one of my troubles is about my education. I do so very much want an education, and I don't see how I am ever to get one without going away from Boonville, and I don't see how I go."

"What is 'an education,' Rhoda?" asked Aunt Hannah. "What do you mean by it?"

"Why, an education is—why, going to school and studying—going through a course of study," answered Rhoda, not very clearly. "I know what I mean, but I can't put it into words."

"You don't know whether you know what you mean or not unless you can put your meaning into words," said Aunt Hannah. "Suppose you bring the book on the table and let us see what this same word education really does mean. You will find it in the lower part of the bookcase."

Rhoda brought the volume on "Mental Discipline" from the east room, and running over the pages, found what she sought and read aloud:

"Education, the act of educating; the act of developing and cultivating the various physical, intellectual, and moral faculties; formation of the manners and improvement of the mind; instruction, tuition, culture, breeding."

"There you have it," said Aunt Hannah; "I suppose that is what you want. Now, the question is whether it is necessary to go away from Boonville to obtain it. What do you think?"

"Well, as to my physical faculties, they are pretty well developed already," said Rhoda, smiling. "I fancy I can walk and ride and so on, as well as any girl of my age in the county, and I am not very bad at doing housework; only mother says I forget what I am about."

"Well, how about the others?"

"I think my moral qualities have a good chance enough, considering what a nice home I have and who has always been my Sunday-school teacher," said Rhoda, with a loving glance at Aunt Hannah—"a better chance than they have improved, I am afraid. I wish you were not going away, Aunt Hannah."

"It will be only for a few weeks, my dear. Well, now for the intellectual part."

"Exactly: and there you must admit, Aunt Hannah, that I have very little chance. There isn't one bit of use in my going to school to Miss Smith any more. I only go round and round like a blind horse in a brickyard; only I don't help to make any bricks, that I see. I thought I had it all arranged so nicely, and then Mr. Maynard must go and get a call somewhere else."

"Yes, I was sorry for that. Mrs. Maynard was a very nice woman."

"And really, Aunt Hannah, I don't see how that part of my education is to come about. I should like to learn French and German and Latin, and especially music. I don't think I care so much about drawing and rhetoric and moral philosophy, and all the other things that girls learn in school."

"And I should like to have you. But, Rhoda, you need not be an uneducated person, even if you have none of these things, and you can have some of them as well out of school as in—not as easily, perhaps, but as well."

"How, Aunt Hannah?"

"By studying what you can find to study, and thinking about what you learn."

"There is one of my great troubles," said Rhoda, candidly; "I never can think on purpose—regularly, I mean. I try to do it, and the first I know my thoughts are at the ends of the earth."

"Then you had better begin your education right there, my dear," said Aunt Hannah; "for nothing more important than the art of thinking can be learned at school or anywhere else. Come, now, let me set you a task. I think you mentioned history as one of the things you wanted to learn?"

"It is one, whether I mentioned it or not."

"Very good. Now, I shall be gone about three weeks. You may take home my Rollin, and read about ten pages a day; and when I come home, I will see how much you can tell me about it. You had better take the whole set. You may want to refer from one volume to another.

"And, Rhoda, try to educate yourself in another point. Try to learn to mind what you are about, and to do your best at whatever you undertake, whether it is reading or housework, or anything else, and learn all that comes in your way, if it be no more than a mere piece of fancy-work or a new recipe for cake. You will always find some corner where such things fit in. If you want any other books while I am gone, you can come down and get them. Aunt Sarah will stay here and keep house."

"I wondered what was to become of Molly and Fuzzyball," said Rhoda. "But, Aunt Hannah, though all this is very nice, and I shall like it ever so much, it doesn't help me altogether."

"I know it, child, I understand you exactly, because I have been in the same place. At your age I was as ambitious as you are, and I would have moved heaven and earth, as the saying is, to get just such an education as you want, but it was not for me, and I had to be content without it."

"I am sure nobody would think of your wanting an education, Aunt Hannah," said Rhoda; "I think you know more things than anybody I ever saw. I mean you have more general information, as Uncle Evans says. He was talking about some young man in the college one day, and he said the boy had been to school so constantly that he has never acquired any general information."

Aunt Hannah smiled:

"Well, my dear; I never thought the fact of my having no regular school education was any reason for my not learning all I could, and it need not be so in your case. Make the best of all the opportunities that come in your way, and you will never be lacking, though you may not learn all the things you would wish to know. Above all, don't neglect the things you can do, because you are waiting to do something better. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; and, my dear, try not to fret or worry about the future, but leave it in the hands of your heavenly Father.

"'Trust in the Lord, and do good.'

"'Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.'

"Now, what is your second trouble? You said there were two."

"Well, I am not so sure about the second trouble," said Rhoda. "Sometimes I think it is only an imagination. I am afraid I am growing jealous and suspicious, Aunt Hannah."

"That would be a real trouble, certainly," said Aunt Hannah; "but why do you think so?"

"Because, Aunt Hannah, I can't help thinking that father and mother are different to me since the baby has come—that they don't treat me as they used to. There! The thing is out."

Aunt Hannah put down her pan of mushrooms and went into the next room for a moment. When she came back, she asked, quietly,—

"Why, my dear, what makes you think so? Because you have more work to do?"

"No, indeed, Aunt Hannah: that is not it at all," answered Rhoda, rather warmly. "Of course I expect to have more to do, and I only wish mother would let me do a great deal more for her and the dear baby. But I don't know—she is different somehow. She doesn't seem to like to leave me with her as she used to; and, Aunt Hannah, I am sure she does not like to have me call baby my brother. She does not say anything, but I don't think she likes it."

"Are you sure that is not a fancy?"

"I thought it was at first, Aunt Hannah, and I scolded myself for it, but I am quite sure it is so. And—" Rhoda's voice failed, and she winked very hard with both eyes as she bent over her work. "I have tried very hard to put away the thought, Aunt Hannah," she continued, after a little pause, and in a low voice; "I have striven and prayed against it, and I am sure I am not jealous of the baby: dear little fellow! It has troubled me a great deal, so at last I thought I would mention it to you."

"I am glad you have done so, Rhoda, and I will tell you what I think about it as well as I can," said Aunt Hannah. "It often happens in a family that when a new baby comes, the old one has to be turned off and put aside in a good many ways. I think this is the case with you at present. You have been baby a long time, now you are in a manner dethroned, and you must try to abdicate gracefully and be content with the place of elder daughter and sister—a much more responsible and useful position, and in the long run perhaps quite as agreeable."

"I am sure I don't mind, if that is all," said Rhoda.

"We will try to think that is all," said Aunt Hannah, cheerfully. "There are women who can never be just to other people's children when they have little ones of their own, but I do not believe your mother is one of that kind."

"I am sure she isn't," said Rhoda, with emphasis. "There! I believe these are all finished, Aunt Hannah."

"And very pretty they are. Well, my dear, as you are to learn all sorts of things, you know, you may make the fire and put on the kettle; and then, if you will get out the baking things, I will teach you how to make those cream biscuit you like so much, and you may stop on your way home and carry a plateful to Mrs. Makay. Sam likes good things to eat, and they are about the only pleasures he has sense enough to enjoy, poor fellow!"