Elsie ran down to the kitchen, asking of one and another of the servants as she passed, "Where's Pompey?" The last time she put the question to Phoebe, the cook, but was answered by Pompey himself. "Here am Pomp, Miss Elsie; what does little missy want wid dis chile?"
"Are you going to the city to-night, Pompey?"
"Yes, Miss Elsie, I'se got some arrants to do for missus an' de family in ginral, an' I ben gwine start in 'bout ten minutes. Little missy wants sumpin', eh?"
Elsie motioned to him to come close to her, and then putting her purse into his hands, she told him in a whisper of Arthur's wish, and directed him to purchase the coveted toy, and bring it to her, if possible, without letting any one else know anything about it. "And keep half a dollar for yourself, Pompey, to pay you for your trouble," she added in conclusion.
"Tank you, little missy," he replied, with a broad grin of satisfaction; "dat be berry good pay, and Pomp am de man to do dis business up for you 'bout right."
The tea-bell rang, and Elsie hastened away to answer the summons. She looked across the table at Arthur with a pleasant smile on her countenance, but he averted his eyes with an angry scowl; and with a slight sigh she turned away her head, and did not look at him again during the meal.
Pompey executed his commission faithfully; and when Elsie returned to her own room after her evening hour with Miss Rose, Chloe pointed out the little ship standing on the mantel.
"Oh! it's a little beauty," cried Elsie, clapping her hands and dancing up and down with delight; "how Arthur will be pleased! Now, mammy, can you take it to the school-room, and put it on Master Arthur's desk, without anybody seeing you?"
"Ole Chloe'll try, darlin," she said, taking it in her hands.
"Oh! wait one moment," exclaimed Elsie, and taking a card, she wrote on it, "A present to Arthur, from his niece Elsie." Then laying it on the deck of the little vessel. "There, mammy," she said, "I think that will do; but please look out first to see whether any one is in the hall."
"Coast all clear, darlin'," replied Chloe, after a careful survey; "all de chillens am in bed before dis time, I spec." And taking a candle in one hand and the little ship in the other, she started for the school-room. She soon returned with a broad grin of satisfaction on her black face, saying, "All right, darlin', I put him on Massa Arthur's desk, an' nobody de wiser."
So Elsie went to bed very happy in the thought of the pleasure Arthur would have in receiving her present.
She was hurrying down to the breakfast-room the next morning, a little in advance of Miss Rose, who had stopped to speak to Adelaide, when Arthur came running up behind her, having just come in by a side door from the garden, and seizing her round the waist, he said, "Thank you, Elsie; you're a real good girl! She sails beautifully. I've been trying her on the pond. But it mustn't be a present; you must let me pay you back when I get my allowance."
"Oh! no, Arthur, that would spoil it all," she answered quickly; "you are entirely welcome, and you know my allowance is so large that half the time I have more money than I know how to spend."
"I should like to see the time that would be the case with me," said he, laughing. Then in a lower tone, "Elsie, I'm sorry I teased you so. I'll not do it again soon."
Elsie answered him with a grateful look, as she stepped past him and quietly took her place at the table.
Arthur kept his word, and for many weeks entirely refrained from teasing Elsie, and while freed from that annoyance she was always able to have her tasks thoroughly prepared; and though her governess was often unreasonable and exacting, and there was scarcely a day in which she was not called upon to yield her own wishes or pleasures, or in some way to inconvenience herself to please Walter or Enna, or occasionally the older members of the family, yet it was an unusually happy winter to her, for Rose Allison's love and uniform kindness shed sunshine on her path. She had learned to yield readily to others, and when fretted or saddened by unjust or unkind treatment, a few moments alone with her precious Bible and her loved Saviour made all right again, and she would come from those sweet communings looking as serenely happy as if she had never known an annoyance. She was a wonder to all the family. Her grandfather would sometimes look at her as, without a frown or a pout, she would give up her own wishes to Enna, and shaking his head, say, "She's no Dinsmore, or she would know how to stand up for her own rights better than that. I don't like such tame-spirited people. She's not Horace's child; it never was an easy matter to impose upon or conquer him. He was a boy of spirit."
"What a strange child Elsie is?" Adelaide remarked to her friend one day. "I am often surprised to see how sweetly she gives up to all of us; really she has a lovely temper. I quite envy her; it was always hard for me to give up my own way."
"I do not believe it was easy for her at first," said Rose. "I think her sweet disposition is the fruit of a work of grace in her heart. It is the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which God alone can bestow."
"I wish I had it, then," said Adelaide, sighing.
"You have only to go to the right source to obtain it, dear Adelaide," replied her friend, gently.
"And yet," said Adelaide, "I must say I sometimes think that, as papa says, there is something mean-spirited and cowardly in always giving up to other people."
"It would indeed be cowardly and wrong to give up principle," replied Rose, "but surely it is noble and generous to give up our own wishes to another, where no principle is involved."
"Certainly, you are right," said Adelaide, musingly. "And now I recollect that, readily as Elsie gives up her own wishes to others on ordinary occasions, I have never known her to sacrifice principle; but, on the contrary, she has several times made mamma excessively angry by refusing to romp and play with Enna on the Sabbath, or to deceive papa when questioned with regard to some of Arthur's misdeeds; yet she has often borne the blame of his faults, when she might have escaped by telling of him. Elsie is certainly very different from any of the rest of us, and if it is piety that makes her what she is, I think piety is a very lovely thing."
Elsie's mornings were spent in the school-room; in the afternoon she walked, or rode out, sometimes in company with her young uncles and aunts, and sometimes alone, a negro boy following at a respectful distance, as a protector. In the evening there was almost always company in the parlor, and she found it pleasanter to sit beside the bright wood-fire in her own room, with her fond old nurse for a companion, than to stay there, or with the younger ones in the sitting-room or nursery. If she had no lesson to learn, she usually read aloud to Chloe, as she sat knitting by the fire, and the Bible was the book generally preferred by both; and then when she grew weary of reading, she would often take a stool, and sitting down close to Chloe, put her head in her lap, saying, "Now, mammy, tell me about mamma."
And then for the hundredth time or more the old woman would go over the story of the life and death of her "dear young missus," as she always called her; telling of her beauty, her goodness, and of her sorrows and sufferings during the last year of her short life.
It was a story which never lost its charm for Elsie; a story which the one never wearied of telling, nor the other of hearing. Elsie would sit listening, with her mother's miniature in her hand, gazing at it with tearful eyes, then press it to her lips, murmuring, "My own mamma; poor, dear mamma." And when Chloe had finished that story she would usually say, "Now, mammy, tell me all about papa."
But upon this subject Chloe had very little information to give. She knew him only as a gay, handsome young stranger, whom she had seen occasionally during a few months, and who had stolen all the sunshine from her beloved young mistress' life, and left her to die alone; yet she did not blame him when speaking to his child, for the young wife had told her that he had not forsaken her of his own free choice; and though she could not quite banish from her own mind the idea that he had not been altogether innocent in the matter, she breathed no hint of it to Elsie; for Chloe was a sensible woman, and knew that to lead the little one to think ill of her