Aunt Rosy's Chest

THIS world has produced but one Aunt Rosy ; none such were ever known before her, neither after her have any arisen like unto her. She was the idol of the nursery ; and though there might be minor deities among dolls or dogs or books, we all united to worship at her shrine.

She was nurse at the old place for more than thirty years, and two generations of babies had been cradled on her wide lap, tossed in her strong arms, and hushed to sleep under the eaves of her turban. So far as children were concerned, she had certainly found the lucky-stone. Cross babies became serene under her conciliatory cooing; staringly wakeful little eyes were seduced into sleep by her slumberous hushaby ; stubborn stomach-aches were charmed away with her soft patting and peppermint-tea combined ; cruel, hidden pins that pierced tender flesh her knowing fingers would find and draw out as with a magnet; and first and last, and black and white, seventeen babies have cut their teeth on the soft, tough forefinger of Aunt Rosy’s left hand.

As for the woes of older children, it paid well to be thwarted, for the exquisite comfort of throwing yourself on her broad, pacific bosom, and feeling her arms about you as she swayed to and fro and crooned to you ; while her long ear ring dangled against your cheek all the time, and her big boxing-glove of a hand went pat, pat, pat, on the middle of your back, till you felt as if heaven, and love, and all things dear, had found their home within the folds of Aunt Rosy’s blue jean gown and red and yellow bandanna.

It is strange to see what varied traits distinguish the families on an estate ; they might almost belong to different races, in their marked diversity. Phil’s family, for instance, were sooty-black, patient, hard-working souls ; while Sancho’s people were little, wiry, grayish, apish-looking creatures, quick and cunning as monkeys, and with no more apparent conscience ; and Aunt Rosy’s relations were gigantic men and women, — children of the Anakim, — with huge frames well padded with flesh, and religious through every ounce of their substance. Her parents, Aunt Patience and Unk Steve, were the models of piety for all on the old plantation, and for years their little cabin had been the scene of the weekly prayer-meeting. They had been young, and now they were old, and in youth and age they were still the same patient, God-fearing, childlike souls, bringing up children and grandchildren to follow in their steps ; a huge, brawny, faithful race, ponderous and pious, exponents of muscular Christianity in the fullest sense, and a terror to evil-doers as much for their strength as their goodness. More than once it happened that when some one of the men in the kitchen had infringed Aunt Rosy’s rights, or used his tongue too freely in her presence, she had quietly but remorselessly shouldered him like a bag of meal, and, marching out of the kitchen door, tossed him into the middle of the duck-pond. " Let ’em mind their manners,” she would say loftily, “ or Aunt Rosy ’ll give ’em another chance to larn.” Aunt Rosy always walked with her head high in the air, her elbows well squared, — that is, if it is possible to square such a circle as her arms were, — and with a sort of rolling gait that could afford to appear unsteady, because it was really so firm. Her great cushioned feet came down with elephantine weight and softness, silent as a cat’s, but shaking the earth ; and as she stepped she seemed always to sink an inch or two before she came to the solid, as if she had scrubbingbrushes strapped to her soles and the bristles bent under her weight. Hundreds of times, when we were all little and Aunt Rosy had washed and dressed us for dinner, she would take Lucy and me in her arms, and Fred and George on her back, singing after a fashion of her own, “Aunty Rosy’s pinky-posies, two in her arms and two on her shoseys”; and then she used to settle down so as she walked, it felt as if she were going through the floor; but she never did, and, so environed and surmounted with children, she carried us down the stairs, across the broad hall to the dining room, and deposited us safely in our seats.

Happy were the children that grew up under the broad shadow of Aunt Rosy! It was impossible to be persistently naughty under her régime; she did not believe in badness, she ignored it. When any one was passionate, they were only “ makin' b’lieve ” ; when they sulked, they were just “a gittin ready to be good ” ; and overt acts of anger or mischief that could not be winked at were “ great mistakes, that warnt a gwine to happen agin on no ’count.”

Her resources in the way of amusement were unfailing; tea-parties were improvised in an instant at all hours of the day; the irksome routine of the toilet was transformed into an exciting little drama, where each played a fascinating role ; and whenever we went to walk, Aunt Rosy trundling slowly along as a centripetal force, and the children racing on before or behind and coming perpetually back to her, there was always some mighty mission to be performed, a despatch to carry, or a prize to secure. If Aunt Dolly was sick, Aunt Rosy could take her place in the kitchen, for working was one of her gifts, and then the children followed, and played at bread and cake making; or if the laundry work was behind, Aunt Rosy walked into the washroom and finished up the fine things with magical skill, teaching her adherents in the mean time to flute doll-clothes. Her needle-work was exquisite, too ; and, in fact, there was hardly anything about a house that she could not do admirably; so good and so skilful was she, that every one looked up to her and loved her, from the head of the house down,—excepting Aunt Dolly, whose approbation was the least bit dimmed by a tinge of jealousy ; and Sancho, who never looked up to mortal being. But there are spots upon the sun, — I have tried in vain to see them, but science assures us they are there, —and so there were tiny maculæ, equally invisible to me, upon Aunt Rosy’s great, warm, loving heart, — spots, she has told me, of pride and self-esteem. She was proud of her strength, proud of her pious parents, proud of her position in the family, proud of the confidence reposed in her, and of the children under her charge, and especially proud of the superior language she occasionally used ; it was a thorn in the flesh of the other servants, and she added to its poignancy by the elaborate humility with which she used to explain that persons who had “ lived right amidst and amongst quality for better ’n thirty years could n’t be spected to talk like poor ignorant darkies.” Aunt Dolly used to say that, “ Dat ar Rose was a pleggy sight more high ’n mighty dan de mistis ” ; and as for Sancho, she never came near him, without his seizing hold of the first solid thing he could find, and beseeching her to “ haze along quick, ’fore dem airs blowed him away, ’cause he’d done clar forgot to put dem weights in his shoes dat mornin’ ! ” Aunt Rosy had been married once, long ago, in a time so far back that she declared she did n't remember much about it. She could recollect all that had happened when she was a child, and everything that had taken place since the nuptial knot had been severed, but of that intermediate time she was quite oblivious. Out of this matrimonial voyage, with its calms and storms and final impenetrable fog, Aunt Rosy appeared to have saved only two things, — one was a very small and gloomy opinion of the lordly sex ; the other an exceedingly large and bright blue chest, iron-bound at the corners, and with such a padlock as one only sees nowadays in Punch. With all her worldly goods she this endowed, and might have got into it herself very comfortably besides. Here she kept her clothes, her keepsakes, her trinkets, and her spelling-book ; her needles, scissors, threads, and thimbles, — stout, round, steel thimbles like little tubs with the bottoms out, — and pieces of soap, ends of candle, knots of yarn, and papers of “goodies.” Here reposed in sacred seclusion her early husband’s best “swaller-tail, Sabba-day, go-to-meetin’ coat,” kept possibly, not so much from love for the departed, as from fear that it might be claimed by some grasping relation-in-law. Here, too, lay scattered in one corner or another her precious turbans, —brilliant plaid ginghams for week-days, blazing bandannas for Sundays and small occasions, and snowy crisp cambric for grand gala days. Her comb and brush dwelt there in darkness from one Saturday afternoon to another, when they came forth, did heavy duty, and went back again. Aunt Rosy was always thinking about making a quilt of the evening-star pattern, and everybody had been giving her patches for twenty years, but she had never got ready yet, and the pieces lay dispersed promiscuously through the chest. Then there were some choice bits of logwood for dyeing things black, a precious powder for taking black spots out of white, various bunches of dried herbs for making catnip, peppermint, or horehound tea, and an unfailing remedy in a green glass bottle for curing a “ pain across you.”

These were a portion of Aunt Rosy’s possessions, but not by any means all. She had untold wealth of odds and ends in that huge chest, and whenever there came a demand in the family for something particularly uncommon and out of the way, Aunt Rosy’s chest would be almost certain to supply the demand. She was like the mother in the Swiss Family Robinson, whose mysterious bag seemed able to furnish whatever was needed in an emergency, or like the householder of Scripture who brought forth out of his treasures things new and old. But Aunt Rosy could not be hurried in her researches, for that chest had characteristics of its own ; one was, that whatever you wanted was always at the bottom, while all you did not want was conveniently on top; another was, that owing to the soap, the candles, the herbs, the woollens, and the air-tight lid, its atmosphere, like that of the great St. Peter’s, was the same all the year through. It was better than a puppet-show to us children to be allowed to look into it, under Aunt Rosy’s supervision. We never touched it in her absence ; for though she had not positively forbid it, we knew the chest was the very apple of her eye, and moreover, the great, grim padlock had a noli me tangere expression that repressed meddling.

The sun never rose in the east without bringing to Aunt Rosy the virtuous resolution of putting the chest in perfect order before night, if she found leisure ; and the sun never sank in the west without leaving her imbued with a mild regret that no such leisure had been found.

“Most ’mazin’ thing!” Aunt Rosy would say in her placid, imperturbable way, — “most ’mazin’ thing, what a mux that chist gits into ! If there was chillen runnin’ to it, now, to mux it, I shouldn’t be so took aback, but only me a handlin’ on it, and me so pretikler, I can’t give no ’count of it ! Wal, if the Lord spares me, and I live, and git a little time to-morrer, I ’ll put it to rights, sartain. I reckon that ere Sank must come a meddlin’ to it, he’s up to everything.” But for an unprejudiced mind, there was no need to fall back on Sancho’s mischief to account for the chaos in Aunt Rosy’s chest. Probably she had no motto for action, but her practice had been, “ No place for anything, and everything in something else’s place.” And the padlock, which in point of size might have belonged to Og, King of Bashan, had its little ways, for all that. It “ took kinks,” and came to a dead-lock somewhere in its vasty dim interior. Then, if Aunt Rosy wanted to secure her possessions, she took the simple method of lifting the great chest in her strong arms and turning it just upside down, upon the cover; safe in the knowledge that it would take two men to put it back again, before meddling hands could get a chance to “ mux ” her treasures.

Sancho, whose character Aunt Rosy had slightly aspersed, was like and yet unlike the chevalier Bayard ; being unfailingly sans paur, but unfortunately never sans reproche. He had been in the kitchen a year or two, to run of errands, pick up chips, black the boots, and roll round under foot generally, and had recently been promoted to the office of waiter, in place of Dick, retired, superannuated. But Dick had only retired as far as the pantry, where he watched over the best china, and rubbed the silver, and whence he darted forth twenty times a day, like a big black spider from his lair, to pounce upon the unwary Sancho, and drag him to justice for his pranks ; and Sancho, in return, tormented Dick almost to the disrupture of soul and body. It was soon found out by the higher powers, that it was of no manner of use to punish Sancho for his tricks. While you were tutoring him for one, he was cutting up three more under your very nose. Just when you thought one piece of mischief fairly dead and buried, up sprang a host of others from that prolific soil ; as if, like Cadmus and his dragon’s teeth, every one that was sowed produced an army.

But Dick, on the other hand, was the very genius of deportment. He had a high sense of duty, immense personal dignity which never relaxed, and a stiffness of manner beyond the primness of pokers, beyond the rigidity of ramrods, beyond everything but his own ideal of “de fust manners of de fust waiter in a fust fambly.” Sank was one long agony to him. No one but a pompous master of ceremonies, yoked in abhorred and perpetual fellowship with the court fool, could possibly appreciate Dick’s sufferings.

The much - esteemed chest stood in a little room opening out of the nursery, where Aunt Rosy slept, and where she might be said to hold her court ; for large and sunny as the nursery was, whenever there were narrations going on, or Scripture renderings after Aunt Rosy’s own fashion, we all liked to crowd into her little room and sit along on the edge of the chest, like a row of chickens at roost. She was considered a great speaker and exhorter, in the meetings held at Unk Steve’s little cabin. In fact, she stood next in renown to Unk Steve himself, who was esteemed second to none but those who were called “ pinted ministers.” He could not read one blessed word, but he had faith as a little child ; and then, too, there were open visions vouchsafed him, which counterbalanced all small external deficiencies.

We used to want Aunt Rosy to take us to these meetings sometimes, but she never approved the plan.

“ Go to yer own church, chillen,” she would say. “ Them that goes a gaddin’ from meetin’ to meetin’, is jist like butterflies ; they sniff at a powerful sight of things, but they don’t gather no honey. Go to yer own meetin’, and ’tend to yer own minister. It takes larnin’ to edify quality. White preachin’ for white folks, and culled preachin’ for culled folks.”

“ Then why is n’t there a white Bible and a colored Bible ? ” I asked one day.

“ Wal now, ducky,” she answered, “ don’t you know the word of God is clar like crystal ; but when you put that crystal in the sun you see all the colors of the rainbow in it ; every one finds his own color there if he’s a mind to look for it. And jes so with God’s word, all colors and all kinds have got a share into it.”

“ But how will it be when we come to go to heaven, Aunty ? ”

“ Wal, chile, you can’t understand 'bout that now very easy. You see we ’re all like so many snails now, each into his own shell, some white on the outside, some black, some stripedlike, and some pretty much mixed ; but when the day comes to break through these ’ere shells, and stand with our souls bare in the sight of God, he’s gwine to take all those souls that love him and wash ’em white in the blood of Christ; and those that don't love him, — those that don’t, — wal, ducky, we’ve got nothin’ to do with those that don’t.”

Aunt Rosy was very fond of telling us Bible stories ; and as she could not read, notwithstanding the spellingbook enshrined in the chest, the chapters that some of us read to her one week would come forth from her lips the next in so new a dress and so fresh a light, that they both astonished and fascinated her young hearers. She had her own ways of illuminating dark meanings, but she was as scrupulous as St. Paul, when he said, “Now the rest speak I, not the Lord ; yet I give my judgment.” “ Chillen,” she would honestly explain, “ this is my ’pinion ’bout it, recolleck ; I don’t say its Scripter, but I do say it’s my ’pinion.” She quite agreed with St. Paul too on the subject of marriage, except that she applied it to one sex only. “When yer Aunt Rosy’s dead and gone to glory, chillen,” she used to say, “ and yer all grown up massas and mistises, then you must ’member what she tells yer. Massa Freddy and Massa Georgy, they must git married jes as soon as they find a good wife, for a good wife is from the Lord. And my little young ladies, they must stick to their father and mother; for don’t you see, the angels don’t marry nor give in marriage, and some of these ’ere fine pious little ladies, as knowin’ as grown-up babies, they’re too much like the angels to be mixin' tlieirselves up in such a despit bad mux of troubles as mankind have made it. ’T was meant to be the best thing for all, married life was, I should n’t wonder ; but Lord, chillen ! men have spiled it, till it’s lost all the color and shape it had when the good Lord fust set it agoin’.”

The parable of the Prodigal Son,— who was always spoken of, however, with an unscriptural vagueness as the Probable Son, — and the parable of the Ten Virgins, were two of Aunt Rosy’s favorite topics. It is possible that circumstances had somewhat prejudiced her mind, for she always insisted that the five wise virgins were five righteous females well prepared to meet their Lord ; while the five foolish ones were five reckless men, who counted upon getting into Heaven on the merits of their sisters and cousins.

“ Them five scatter-brains,” she would say, “ they spent their time a eatin’, and drinkin’, and smokin’, and like nuff pitchin’ pennies or playin’ picky-puey, and the time was come for to start, and sure nuff, their lights was all out and they wanted to borrer! That’s jes like some folks, — borrer, borrer all their lives and on their dyin’-beds ! If they should any way git to Heaven, they’d be bound to snap a string in a jiffy, and want to borrer somebody else’s harp ! Wal, you see, those five wild young fellers, they wanted to borrer, and those five pious young women, they could n’t lend noways. Now I ’ll tell you why. ’T warnt ’cause they were stingy, ’t warnt ’cause they did n’t have plenty; ’t was ’cause that lamp that lighted them right through the darkness into heaven was jes nothin’ but the bright shining love of the Lord Jesus in their hearts, and that’s a thing you can’t borrer, be you ever so put to it; nor you can’t lend, even when yer ready to die, you want to give it so! Each one for hisself, when that great day comes ! But ’bout those five scatter-brains, chillen, that’s not Scripter, recolleck, but it’s my ’pinion.”

Aunt Rosy had been telling us about old times one day, and of a terrible storm that had raged once when she was a child, — a storm that had cast a ship ashore, thrown down the east chimney, and uprooted a great oak that stood nearly in front of the house on the lawn.

“ You look in the old, old massa’s picter, chillen,” she concluded, “that hangs to the end of the hall, and way behind him you 'II see that tree all painted out green. Then you can tell jes’ whar it used to stand.”

We scampered down stairs in a string, to look at great-grandfather’s picture, and see how the oak stood, and meeting Fred on the stairs, took him with us.

“O dear,” said Lucy, gazing up at the stern old portrait, “ I’m so glad our papa don’t look in that cross way ! I’d be afraid to sit on his lap, or pull his curls, or anything.”

“ O but Lucy,” said Fred, “ men had to look stern in those days when he lived : they were patriots and soldiers, and they fought for their country.”

“I like him,” said Georgie, “because he ’s got such a pretty picture of a little chicken tied to him.”

“It’s not a chicken, it’s a bird,” said Lucy.

“ It’s the king of all the birds, its an eagle,” said I.

“It is the Order of the Society of the Cincinnati,” said Fred proudly, getting on a chair, to see it better. “It belonged to my great-grandfather, first, and then to my grandfather; it goes from eldest son to eldest son, always ; now it’s father’s, and then it will be mine ; and it will go to my eldest son after me, and to his eldest son after him.”

Fred looked so funny, standing up with his thirteen-year-old curly head high in the air, talking in that large way about his grandchildren, that we laughed, and he flushed up, displeased for a minute.

“ It’s nothing to laugh at,” he said, “ if you only knew what it meant ! The society was named after Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, a Roman citizen, who left his plough and his peaceful home to go and fight for his country ; and when the war was over, and the people wanted to make him something great, — dictator, or something else, you ’ll find out when you get into Robbins’s Outlines, bother take it ! — he would n’t be made anything of, but just went quietly home again. And that’s the way our men did in the Revolution. But you had to be not only a soldier, but an officer and a gentleman, before you could belong to that society, and that’s why I 'm proud of it.”

“ If you ’re going to have that pretty bird, where is he now ? ” asked Lucy.

“ I ’ll show it to you ! ” cried Fred eagerly, jumping down from his chair; “ I know just where father keeps it, in the little drawer of the desk in the secretary,” And darting away he returned again in a minute with the badge swinging from his fingers, and held it up before our admiring eyes.

It was a lovely thing enough to childish fancies; a golden eagle, brilliant with green enamel and fiery red eyes, suspended on a thick blue ribbon with a white edge. There was a chorus of approving voices, and Fred exclaimed, “ I knew you’d like it, when you saw it”; and then, full of enthusiasm, he entered upon an animated account of the forming of the society, the meaning of the emblems, the beautiful badge sent by the queen of France to General Washington, and all the stately ceremony of the early meetings, when suddenly, in the very midst of his spirited little oration, we heard the wheels of the carriage that was bringing home our parents from a two days’ visit at Aunt Singleton’s, and, while Fred hurried away to put the badge in its place, we sped to the piazza to shout our noisy welcome, forgetting Cincinnatus, war, glory, and grandfathers in the joy of seeing the dear faces again, and the fun of pulling open the papers of bonbons that Aunt Singleton had sent.

Fred’s vacations always flew by like the flight of a swallow ; and almost before we knew it he had gone back to school, and everything was going on again in the old pleasant, quiet way. The year rolled by, and brought no apparent change to any one but poor Aunt Rosy. Her health seemed to fail day by day, till she was only a dark phantom of her former self, She hardly appeared to know what was the matter with herself, and to all inquiries came the inevitable response, “It’s a pain across me ! ”

There never yet was a creature on all the place who did not make exactly that answer about his illnesses. No matter whether he had measles, or fever, or rheumatism, or indigestion, or headache, or chills, that was the invariable statement, “It’s a pain across me,” and nothing but the closest crossquestioning would elicit anything more definite. Whether there is a sensitive slice across the middle of the corporeal substance of the race ; whether their nerves are all gathered into a belt about them, instead of being generally diffused as in paler nations ; or whether the expression has a large vagueness about it that covers many symptoms and has a sound of dignity to their ears, — it is impossible to tell: the simple fact remains, that this is their one only and inalienable complaint; and Aunt Rosy’s “pain across her” grew worse and worse, till strength and flesh were gone, and her huge frame showed its joints and angles in a way hitherto unknown in her family. With her failing health, her spirits seemed to change too. She was always kind and docile, and patient as an angel, with the mischief and waywardness that spring spontaneously in every nursery ; but her serene, childlike faith and cheerful religious views seemed to have vanished. She would sit on her chest, or on the side of her bed, and clasp her big hands and sway to and fro, and sigh as if her heart would break. Sometimes she would speak of herself so despondently, and with such dark forebodings that it made us cry and cling to her.

One day, soon after Fred had come home again, he chanced to be in the nursery and heard Aunt Rosy talking to Lucy, in her little room. “ Wal, chile,” she said, “ I ’m been thinkin’ ’bout that sermon Mr. Scott preached two Sundays ago. If there’s people ’lected to be lost, I’m feared I’m one on them.”

“ What does ‘ ’lected to be lost ’ mean ? ” asked Lucy.

“ Why, chile, pinted by God, chose out by him afore you was born, to go down to torment, whether or no.”

Lucy’s eyes opened wide with horror, and Fred exclaimed in his cheery way, “Pshaw! I don’t believe it! I don’t believe Scott preached it.”

“ Yes, he did, chile, he said it.”

“ Well, if he did, that don't make it so. It’s a horrid thing to say about God, and I don’t believe it! ”

“ Don’t you, chile ? Whyfor, now ? ”

“Because it is n’t sensible, it is n’t right. God is good and just, and that is about the meanest thing a bad spirit could do. Come, cheer up, Aunt Rosy ! If you don’t, I ’ll pull your turban off, or rummage in your chest, or do something bad to excite you ! There’s going to be company to-day, and we’ve all got to be jolly, so cheer up ! ”

Cousin Mary Singleton happened to be staying with us then, and, by way of a mild festivity, mother gave a little dinner for her. Toward its close, unfortunately for Fred, the conversation chanced to turn upon the old Cincinnati Society, and Cousin Mary having never seen the order, father went to get it for her. He returned without it, however, smiling at his own invariable inability to find things, and promising that mother should show it to her by and by. The conversation changed to something else, and we thought no more of it till the guests were gone, when we children were called into mother’s room. Father sat there looking very grave. “ Children,” he said, “the badge of the Cincinnati Society is gone ; at least, your mother and I have made a thorough search for it, and cannot find it. Have any of you seen it, or taken it ? Do you know anything about it ? ”

“ I guess papa means that pretty chicken Fred showed us,” said Georgie.

“Yes,” said Fred, “that’s it. I had the badge out, last vacation, father, a year ago ; I was telling the girls and George about the society.”

“ But you only had it out a few minutes, Fred,” said I, “and you put it right back again.”

“ I know it,” he answered, blushing, “ that is, I meant to ; but I’m not sure I did.”

“ What then ? ” asked father.

“ I had it in the dining-room, — Sank was there, — I remember holding it up for him to see ; then I heard the carriage stop, and I laid it down on the table under the glass. I meant to run and just see if it was really you who were coming, and then to hurry back and put it away ; but I’m afraid,” he stammered, “ I do believe— I’ve never thought of it from that day to this.”

“ O Fred ! ” said mother, “ how could you be so careless of a thing your father values so much ! ”

“ I don’t know, mother, I’m sure. I ’m awfully sorry. I meant to put it back directly.”

“ That is the last we know of it then,” said father ; “ on the table under the mirror, a year ago ! It seems rather hopeless, for a person who would keep it all this time would scarcely give it up now.”

The next thing was to question the servants, but all professed their entire ignorance of the matter. Aunt Rosy and Dick, Aunt Dolly and Black Ann, had all lived in the house for years. The only people at all new were Sancho, and Clarissa, who helped Aunt Dolly in the kitchen; and so the suspicion seemed to rest between those two; but Clarissa’s work never called her into our part of the house, whereas Sank was the last person seen near the lost badge, so the range of possibility narrowed more and more, till everybody was persuaded that Sank was the culprit, except Aunt Rosy. Mother had sent her to talk with him about it, thinking she might win his confidence by her placid, coaxing ways ; but when the conference was over, Aunt Rosy declared her belief in his innocence, and always held to it. Still that did not greatly change the general opinion, for every one knew that she liked always to believe what was good, and was invariably sceptical about evil ; so each individual conviction remained the same, and continued to lay the guilt on Sank’s shoulders. “ Poor ignorant boy,” said mother, “what else could one expect of him ! I think I had better talk with him myself, and perhaps I can persuade him to confess the truth.”

So mother and Sank held a secret conclave. Mother began with a short eulogy, in her gentle way, on the beauty of goodness and truth, to which Sank responded, “ Yas, ’m,” regularly at every tenth word ; then she made various encouraging remarks about her feeling sure that Sank wanted to be good and truthful, which he struck off into decimals as before, with a drawling, “ Be sure, mistis ” ; and finally she begged him to tell her the truth about the badge.

“ Did you see it, Sank ?” she asked.

“ Yas, ’m, ”said Sank, “seen it all to pieces ! looked him right in de eye ! ”

“ Then what happened ?”

“ Mars’ Freddy laid it on de table.”

“ Well ? ”

“ And run away to see ef you was a comin’.”

“ Yes.”

“Yas, ’m.”

“ Did you take it up ? ”

“ Yas,’m. Turned him over to see what de oder side was like, and turned him back agin, like a chicken a brilin’.”

“ And what then ? ”

“ Den, noffink.”

“ Did you touch it again ?”

“ No I never, mistis ! ”

“Are you sure, Sank ?”

“Lord, mistis, I ain’t got that complaint ! It’s light-headed I be, not light-fingered ! I’m so feerd o’ gittin’ cotched, I durs n’t hook noffink ! ”

“ Sank, can’t you stop joking for one minute, and be serious ?”

“True as I live and breave and draw de breaf o’ life, mistis, I don’t believe I can ! Ef I was swingin’ from a galluses or wrigglin’ on a eel-spear, I might, p’r’aps ! Gwine to try me?”

“No, no ; but, Sank, I do hope you have told me the truth. I shall believe you at all events. I can’t think you would look me in the face and tell me what was n’t true.”

“ O, bress my heart, mistis, that’s easy nuff! I’ve done it lots of times. O, bress my gizzard ! I’ve told Aunt Dolly more ’n leventy thousand lies sence I lived to de house ! Bress all my insides, ef I ain’t told Dick a couple o’ dozen to-day ! ”

“ Why, Sank, what a dreadful thing to say ! ”

“ But ef I said I had n’t, mistis, dat would made anoder one.”

“ Sank, why should you want to tell them ? You are kindly treated in every way, are n’t you ? Why do you want to deceive any one ? ”

“ Lord a massy, mistis ! foolin’ folks and smokin’ ’em was all de fun I used to git! Now I got dat ’ere old Dick to ’muse me, I ain’t so put to it.”

“ But there’s something beyond all this, Sank ; God commands us to speak the truth ; he loves it, and for his sake we must hold to it in word and action. Don’t you want to do what is right, and keep God’s commands, Sank ? ”

“ I would n’t mind, as long as dey was right easy,” said Sank, coolly. “ Mistis, want to see me walk on my hands ? Bin a tryin’ on it over half de night in Dick’s room, and, Hi! how it made dat old darky snore ! ”

“ O Sank ! ” said mother, “you may go—on your feet. I ’m glad there’s a greater heart and wiser head than mine to care for us all ! ”

So Sank went; but after he had left the room, he thrust his little apish head in the door and said, “ Yer gwine to b’lieve Sank, ain’t yer, mistis ? I know yer be, ’cause, you said so, and dat’s why I ’m gwine to tell you suffink else. Ef I have told a million billions lies to Aunt Dolly and Dick, I never told one to my Mistis Calvert, and I ain't never a gwine to.” The door shut before any answer could be given.

So that whole matter rested for a while. There seemed no use in saying anything more about it ; and finally Fred went back to school, humbled and mortified that his carelessness had caused so much trouble in the family, but hoping, as all the others did, that accident, not theft, had caused the disappearance of the badge, and that time would bring everything right again.

All this was a subject of great worry to poor Aunt Rosy ; she was so identified with the family, that whatever troubled them troubled her, and, in her wretched state of health, the vexation had seemed to augment her disease very seriously. She pined and sickened from day to day, till she could scarcely drag one weary foot after the other. The “ pain across her,” she admitted now, came entirely from her chest, which was a shade less vague than before ; but still she seemed able to say nothing definite of it, and refused to see the doctor, even when he was in the house. She could not sleep at night, and used to walk her room with heavy, hopeless steps, hour after hour. “It’s them roosters,” she said to mother ; “ they crow and they crow all night, and they keep me a thinkin’ how Peter denied his Master, because he was afeerd of the sarvin’-gals. They most put me out of my head, and I can’t sleep a wink.”

The traditional cock “crows in the morn” ; not so the gallinaceous birds of the Maryland West Shore ; they begin with the last ghostly stroke of midnight, and keep on till the first wideawake clang of the rising bell. They crow one at a time, two at a time, by threes and fours, and in grand choruses. The venerable fathers of the roost crow with the wisdom and repressed enthusiasm of the ancients; the full-grown cocks, in what the French call the chaud éclat of maturity, with a clarion call that might rouse the dead ; the ambitious young chanticleers, who have not yet grown their cheek-feathers, with a burst of sound that begins more gushingly vehement than any, but ends prematurely, with a mortifying break in their voice. If poor Aunt Rosy kept her vigils through all their crowings, no wonder she was weak and hollow-eyed. Unk Steve came to see her one day, and we overheard a part of their conversation. “ Rosy,” he said, “ ’pears to me dere’s no ’countin’ for dis ’ere complaint o’ yourn widout dat old sarpent called Satan. ’Pears to me like he ’s ’stressin’ yer body and worryin’ at yer soul afore de Lord, like he did to poor old Massa Job, in de Scripter.”

“ ’Pears the same to me, by spells,” said Rosy, wearily ; “ sometimes I think he’s got me tight in his grip. In all yer visions, daddy, did he ever come to ye and wrestle with ye ? ”

“ O Lord a massy ! many a time. I’ve fit wid him, and fit wid him, but he’s one o’ dem dat don’t know when he’s beat ! ”

“ Daddy, did he ever ’pear to you like a bird ? ”

“He did so, darter; ’peared to me jes like a bird once, bigger dan a turkey-buzzard, and he fit and I fit, and he wrestled and I wrestled, all through de night, and I never shook him off till de break o’ day.”

After Unk Steve was gone, we heard Aunt Rosy moan as if in pain, and we ran to ask her what was the matter.

She gathered us into her arms with a deep sob, and cried, “ O Lord, O Lord Almighty ! bless these darlin’ chillen, and pesarve ’em from ever backslidin’, for it’s right down bitter work to be haulin’ up agin ! And O Lord, save ’em from that awful heart of pride that drags down like a millstone ! that pride that hopples the soul, so it can’t nayther run nor feed in the right way ! O my babies, O my duckies, go pray to the Lord for your poor Aunt Rosy.”

Her sorrow awed and grieved us, it was so unlike her own old cheery, hopeful faith, that threw sunshine over everything, and we felt that mind and body both would be impaired beyond remedy unless some immediate relief could be secured. Mother determined to send for a doctor, in spite of Rosy’s reluctance. Our own physician had gone away for a while, and so a very respectable little man was called in, who practised homæopathically. He was a stranger in the county, having only recently settled there ; but his letters of introduction had been such as to establish his position at once as a trustworthy and able practitioner.

He began with the usual mode of questioning.

“It’s a pain across me,” said Aunt Rosy.

“ Across which part of you ? ”

“ My chist ; it’s all in my chist.”

“ Does your back hurt you ? ”

“ No, sir.”

“ Any pain in either side ? ”

“ No, sir.”

“ Can you draw a long breath ? ”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ Let me see you. Slowly now.”

Aunt Rosy turned her head a little on the pillow, looked at him a moment, and then respired like a champion ox.

“ Amazing strength of lungs ! ” said the doctor. “ There can't be any trouble with them.”

Aunt Rosy had been getting more and more vexed with what she considered this fooling. “ I tell you, sir,” she said, “it’s all in my chist ! It’s all right here, under these ’ere two little bones.” She put her thumbs above the belt of her dress. “If ye’ve got what ’ll ease my chist, well and good; if ye have n’t, it’s no use talking.”

Now, in the first place, Aunt Rosy had not any little bones, according to the human criterion, in the whole of her great body. Secondly, in the precise spot where she put her thumbs there were no bones at all, but only the cartilaginous continuation of her lower ribs. Thirdly, there was situated behind them nothing more worthy of notice than heart, lungs, liver, part of the stomach, and a large portion of the spinal structure, any disease of any fraction of any one of which could have given her a mortal malady. However, the little doctor replied, gravely, that he thought he could help her. If he had ordered her a pint of salts or a quart of senna, she would probably have accepted the situation, and the storm would have blown over.

But Aunt Rosy had a low opinion of even the mightiest of the opposite sex, and for small men she felt a contempt passing words; so when this little doctor pulled out his little case, and displayed the tiny pellets of medicine which were appointed to heal her great diseases, she suddenly awoke out of the lethargy which had possessed her for months. Wrath and indignation burned in her veins. Like Samson in the temple of his scoffing enemies, she seemed to cry in her heart, “Lord, strengthen me this once, that I may be avenged of this Philistine for these three grievances, his sex, his size, and his presumption.” She arose off the bed and towered over him, and before the amazed little man could collect his thoughts, she swooped down upon him, coat, cane, case, and all, and lifting him up in her arms ran down stairs with him and set him outside the front door.

Not without creating a sensation though ; for Sank caught sight of her, and screamed with pretended horror, but secret delight, and father and mother came running just in time to see the door shut with a bang behind the ejected physician. Father hurried out to apologize for the action as the vagary of a sick person, and insisted on the doctor’s staying for dinner ; while mother, for the first time in her life, actually scolded Rosy.

“ Mistis ! ” said Rosy, all in a tremble, “ I could n’t help it. Such a reg’lar old-times darky as I be can’t be cured with sugar-teats ! I ain’t got no complaint that answers to ’em ! He ought to ’a’ knowed better ! To see that little Jack-doll of a man a taking out of his little pinhead sugar-plums, and thinkin’ he could cure me with ’em, me! me! with the biggest pain that ever a poor critter had ; me, that’s got to dwinnle away, and pine, and die, and go to judgment, and likely to torment ; cure ME!! Mistis, it ’s lucky I didn’t heave him into the duck-pond ! ”

“Go up stairs, this moment,” said mother ; “ I am very much ashamed of you ! ” And Aunt Rosy went wearily up stairs, with her head on her breast, and a pitiful moan oozing out through her closed lips. But in a few moments mother’s little frost of severity was all thawed away, and she followed Aunt Rosy to comfort her. She was lying in her little room out of the nursery, without sound or motion. She lay like one dead, with that horrible ashy look about the lips and eyes that comes into their poor brown faces in times of dire anguish. Her face was toward the wall, and her arms stretched lifelessly at her side. Mother sat down by her, on the edge of the bed, and the woman’s whole expression of intense agony went to her heart.

“ O Rosy, child ! ” she said, “I wish I could do something for you.”

No answer.

“Are you so much worse to-day ?”

A faint negative motion of the hand.

“ I ’m so unhappy about you ! ”

A long, low groan was the only response.

“ I ’m sure, Rosy,” she continued, “that you can tell me more definitely what is the matter with you. I must find out. People don’t generally have any new diseases you know ; and whatever you have is probably what hundreds of people have had before and have been cured of, bad as you may be ; and if you only will try, Rosy, I ’m sure you can tell me more about it.”

“ O mistis, mistis,” she answered, faintly, “ I’ve told you more ’n a hundred times, but you can’t take no hint; it ’s in my chist, in my chist ! all in my chist, and I’m dyin’, dyin’, dyin’ with it! Open it,” she gasped, — “ open it! ”

Mother leaned quickly over her in alarm, and tried to unfasten the calico gown that lay in folds about her wasted form, but Rosy pushed her gently away.

“No, no,” she gasped again, “not here, not here ! Open it, open it! ” And she made a backward motion of her hand toward the great blue chest behind mother. “Open it, mistis, for de good Lord’s sake, open it before I die ! ”

With the conviction flashing through her mind that Rosy’s brain must be crazed, and yet with the mechanical obedience that one unconsciously yields to such piteous entreaty, mother lifted the heavy cover and leaned it back against the wall. The well-known odor filled the room, the mint and soap, the candies and the dyes, smothered in the stuffy smell of woollens and yarn ; the old confusion still reigned triumphant, but surmounting the other contents, and resting conspicuously on a white handkerchief, lay the badge of the Order of the Cincinnati.

Mother took it up, softly shut the great lid again, and sat down upon the side of the bed once more. Not a word was spoken by mistress or servant, and nothing broke the solemn silence except now and then a longdrawn, stifled, quivering moan. One was silent through an anguish of bitter shame, too deep for words ; the other, through excess of pity, as she thought of the sudden, sharp temptation that must have snared that honest, childlike soul, and of the pride, the remorse, the mental struggle, the thousand mysterious pains and woes, the burning tears at dead of night, and the dread of judgment to come, that had racked body and soul with untold anguish.

At last she spoke sadly. “ I could never have believed it, Rosy, except from yourself.” The woman groaned and writhed and threw her hands up over her face. “ I have always trusted you so entirely.”

“ O, my good Lord in heaven knows ! He knows, mistis, that’s the very thing that’s been a eatin’ on me up inside all this while. You allays trusted me. So did Marsa Lennie ! And them blessed chillen, they think their old Aunt Rosy ’s good, and there’s no sinner like her on the face of the airth ! When I was very young, mistis, I thought it was a cussed thing to have a black skin ; but after the Lord opened my eyes to see the truth, I knowed the skin made no difference, if only the heart was white and clean, for that’s what the Lord looks at; but, O mistis, it’s an awful thing to know yer soul is blacker than yer body ! To know the right and do the wrong, to call the Lord ‘ Massa,’ and serve the Devil, to hold yer head high above the other darkies, when you know all the time you ought to be under their feet, to give evil for good, and to vex and cheat them that loves ye, — that’s jes’ what I’ve been and gone and done, and there ain’t a word to be said ! there ain’t no ’scuse to be made ! There ain’t no soff side to it! ” “Rosy, how did you come to take it ? What tempted you ? ”

“The very old Satan hisself, mistis ! Sure I be, he went into that gold bird with his red eyes and his green breast! ’T was lyin’ on the table betwixt the windows, and first I thought it was some little trinket-like that warnt o’ much use. When I heard Sank comin’ I slipped it into my pocket, and meant to ask mistis about it; but it looked so handsome when I got up stairs, that I thought I’d jes lay it in my chist whar I could see it for a while. I meant to give it to mistis the next day; for, thinks I, there ain’t no hurry ’bout it, when nobody ’pears to miss it. And the next day I ’peared to think the next week would do; and so I went on, allays meanin’ to give it back and never doin’ it, till I’d put it off so long that I was dead ashamed to give it to mistis, and knew I ought to every minute, too. And so it went on wusser and wusser, till that day when there was dinner company and marsa missed it; then I found out how much store he sot by it, and I darssent bring it out ! I wanted to and I could n’t. I kep’ tryin’ and somethin’ held me back! I could n’t stan’ it to let Dolly and Sank and them know I 'd had it all that time. P’r’aps if somebody had jes axed me out and out, I could have said yes. But nobody did. I ’most wished they would many a time, for ever since that day he’s been pickin’ at my heart with his beak, and tearin’ my life out with his claws, and burnin’ me through with his fiery eyes, and hauntin’ of me night and day, asleep or awake, and draggin’ me down, down, down ! O mistis, if there’s one hell lower than another, it’s that place of torment I been into for this last year and a half! I ’spect no marcy from God nor man. I’ve got no spunk left to ask for it, but I praise the Lord that debble’s cast out o’ my chist, if I be tore and overthrew ! ”

“ Poor Rosy ! what a strange thing to happen to you ! ”

“ ’T was pride, mistis, all pride ! I knowed I was pious, and I was proud of it. ’Shamed of my black skin, and proud of my white heart ! I felt stiffnecked over them other darkies, and the Lord has showed me I better grobble in the dust! What’ll be done to me, mistis ? Will I be put in the county jail! ”

“ No, Rosy.”

“Will I be sent to field, mistis, to work along with the hands ! ”

“ No.”

“ Will I be held up for a warnin’ to Dolly and Sank and them ? ”

“ No.”

“ Wal, what then, mistis ? I’d ruther know to once. What are you gwine to do with me ? ”

“ I’m going to forgive you, Rosy, and love you and trust you just the same. You are to stay just where you are, and nobody shall know a word of all this trouble as long as you live.”

Then Aunt Rosy’s poor, worn, aching heart melted within her. She turned on her bed, and laid her big wasted face on mother’s little hand, and cried and sobbed with passionate intensity, pouring out broken words of love and gratitude and penitence and prayer.

“O mistis ! ” she managed to articulate at last, “ you’ve saved my heart from breakin’ and my sold from torment; for sure if you forgive me, the good Lord won’t be behind his chillen in marcy, and he ’ll forgive me too ! He knows what I’ve been and suffered ! He knows it all ! None other could think it! And O, dear mistis, my darlin’ chile, let ’em heave them things right onto the floor and h’ist that mis’able old chist into the west garret ! It’s chuck full of them little ghosts of birds, sperits and spooks, everywhar I look into it, and I ’ll put ’em all to rights to-morrow in the bureau, if I live ! ”

A few weeks after, the discovery of the lost badge was announced, it having been found in a medley of things where such a little matter might be easily mislaid. Father probably knew the truth, but no one else so long as Aunt Rosy lived.

As for Aunt Rosy herself, she recovered with astonishing rapidity; she gained twenty pounds in thirty days, and how much more the record saith not, but she never lost another pennyweight. For the first time in her life she had her possessions arranged in a bureau “like quality,” and the monster chest was carried to the garret by Dick and Sank. There, after Sank had stood on his head on it, thrown Dick into it, locked him up and let him out again, threatened to use the padlock as a cookstove, and the key for a waffleiron, Aunt Rosy’s chest was left to long repose.

Wandering up there in the cobwebby gloom of the west garret to-day, among the relics of the past, that speak with a thousand voices of the days that are gone, I came upon it. I lifted the lid, and the dear, dreadful old smell of the soap and mint and woollens and all the rest came breathing out of it and filling all the air. It was quite empty and yet full, — full to me, as once to Aunt Rosy, of “ sperits and spooks,” and ghosts of bygone years. All Sank’s old mischief rose up from it, all of Dick’s stiff, faithful, formal service ; in my fancy I saw again the treasures that had filled it, scattered now, never to be gathered in again. Aunt Rosy herself “ went to glory ” years ago. She lived to hold the first baby of another generation in her arms. The pride that had been a spot upon her piety never stained it more. Gentle, and childlike, even to Aunt Dolly and Sank, her pleasant old days passed away in reverence toward God, and charity toward man.

As I look at the huge old chest, with its iron-bound corners, and lift its cumbrous padlock in my hand, my heart fills to overflowing with sweet and loving memories of her who once possessed it; and I bless the dear mother whose tenderness healed the great, sorely wounded heart, that one accusing word might have broken forever.

Olive A. Wadsworth.