“Why don’t you speak when you’re spoken to?” said Arthur. “Did you give your tongue to Mother Hubbard?”
“When I’m talked to politely, I always do speak,” said the little girl.
“Oh! and we’re not polite enough to suit you, I suppose,” said Arthur, sneeringly.
“’Tis only engineers’ daughters and the like who are fit company for her,” joined in Charlotte.
“We might go and take lessons from Mother Hubbard, and then perhaps she’d like us better,” said Arthur. “I say, Miss Bradford, what school did you learn your manners in, that you don’t speak when you’re spoken to?”
Bessie remained silent again.
“Do you hear?” shouted Arthur.
“Once I heard of a school where they only paid two cents for learning manners,” said Bessie, demurely.
“What then?” asked Arthur.
“I should think that was the kind of a school you had been to,” answered Bessie.
“And why, I’d like to know?”
“’Cause I shouldn’t think they could teach much manners for two cents.”
Arthur was a clever boy with a quick sense of humor; and he was so struck with what he considered the wit and smartness of the retort, that he forgot to be angry, and, instead of making a sharp answer, broke out into a hearty laugh.
“Pretty good that!” he said. “You’ll do yet.”
“Pretty good, and pretty well deserved too, my lad,” said the gentleman, who had been standing below, coming up the stairs. “See here, Clara, here is the Queen of the Fairies, I believe,” and he turned around to a lady who ran lightly up behind him.
“Queen of the Fairies, indeed,” said the lady, with a laughing look at the little figure before her, in its white dress and shining hair, and lap covered with brilliant flowers: “or Queen of the” – What she would have said was lost, for after a pause of astonishment she exclaimed, “Why! it is – yes, it is Bessie Bradford – dear little Bessie!”
And regardless of her muslin dress with its fluted flounces and ruffles, down went the lady on the stairs before Bessie; and, greatly to her surprise, the little girl found herself held fast in the embrace of a supposed stranger.
But it was no stranger, as she found when she could free herself a little from that tight clasp, and look in the lady’s face.
“Don’t you know me, Bessie?” asked the lady.
“Why! it’s Miss Adams!” cried Bessie, in as great amazement as the new-comer herself.
“And you are a little glad to see me, are you not?” asked the lady, seeing with pleasure the smile and glow on Bessie’s face.
“Not a little, but very, Miss Adams,” she replied. “I was very interested about you, and always thought I’d like to see you again after I heard you’d” – here she hesitated for a word.
“Well,” said the lady.
“I can’t think of the word,” said Bessie. “Oh, yes! reformed, that’s it, – after you’d reformed. You know you wrote and told us about it yourself.”
At this “Miss Adams” went off into a fit of laughter, which sounded very natural to Bessie’s ears; and yet there was a difference in that and in her manner from those of the old days at Quam Beach; something softer and more gentle; “more as if she remembered to be a lady, mamma,” Bessie said afterwards.
The gentleman smiled too.
“Her words are to the point when she does find them,” he said.
“They always were,” said the lady, giving Bessie another kiss. “Bessie, this is the gentleman I found to make me ‘behave myself.’ I hope you’ll find the ‘kitchen lady’ improved under his teaching.”
Bessie colored all over face and neck.
“Oh! please don’t,” she said. “I’m so sorry I said that; but I was such a little child then, I didn’t know any better. I wouldn’t say such a saucy thing now for a great deal.”
“You need not be sorry about it, Bessie: I am not.”
“Please don’t speak about it any more, ma’am,” pleaded the child. “Couldn’t you let bygones be bygones?”
“What do you mean by ‘bygones’?” asked the gentleman.
“I thought it meant, sir,” said Bessie, modestly, “when a person had done something they were sorry for, not to say any thing more about it.”
“Very well,” said the lady, still smiling. “It shall be so, if you wish it, Bessie. And now tell me how your mamma and Maggie and all the rest are.”
“Oh! they are all very well, except mamma, and she is better, and we are travelling to do her good; and a great many things happened to us, Miss Adams, since you knew us before.”
“I don’t think it has ‘happened’ to you to grow much,” said the lady.
“Oh, yes’m!” answered Bessie. “I used to be five, and now I’m seven; and I’ve been to school too. We’ve all grown pretty old. Baby can walk and talk now.”
“And how do you like my doctor?” asked “Miss Adams,” as Bessie still called her, glancing round at the gentleman who stood beside her.
Bessie looked up at him, and he looked down at her, and when their eyes met, both smiled.
“I like him: he looks good and nice;” and the little girl, who had already twisted a rose or two into the bosom of the lady’s dress, now handed two or three to the doctor in her own graceful, gracious little way.
“What are you going to do with all those bouquets you have tied up so tastily?” asked Dr. Gordon.
Bessie told him whom they were for.
“And who is this for?” asked Mrs. Gordon, – for so she told Bessie to call her, – pointing to that which the small fingers were now arranging.
“It’s for a little girl down at the steamer, who is rather hard off, and does not have a nice time, and has extremely ugly clothes,” answered Bessie. “But then if they are the best she has, and she has no mother, no one ought to laugh at her: ought they?”
“Certainly not: who was so unkind?” asked Mrs. Gordon.
“Some children who didn’t behave half so nice as she did, ma’am.”
“Ah!” said the doctor; “and was that boy you were talking to just now one of them?”
“Why, yes, sir,” said Bessie, with some hesitation. “But how did you know it?”
“Oh! I am a good guesser,” answered Dr. Gordon.
“I don’t know if I ought to have said that to him,” said Bessie, thoughtfully. “I b’lieve I was pretty severe.”
At this Mrs. Gordon went off into another fit of laughter; and the doctor smiled as he answered, —
“It was pretty severe, it is true, Bessie; but not more so than he deserved, especially if he had been teasing some poor child who could not defend herself.”
Bessie colored, and answered, “But I’m afraid I did it more ’cause I was angry for his being impolite to me than for his teasing Lucy.”
“But tell us all about it; and did you say the child had no mother?” said Mrs. Gordon.
In reply, Bessie told all she knew about Lucy, omitting, however, to give any account of the unkindness of Arthur Lathrop and his brother and sisters to the poor child. This was noticed by both Dr. and Mrs. Gordon, but they pressed her no farther, seeing she did not wish to speak of it.
“There’s