Fanny Fern - Ruth Hall - A Domestic Tale of the Present Time

Never mind! A great many people keep the first floor spick and span; mayhap you’ll find something wrong up stairs. Walk in; ’tis the “best chamber.” A gilt arrow is fastened to the wall, and pretty white lace curtains are thrown (tent fashion) over it; there is a snow-white quilt and a pair of plump, tempting pillows; the furniture and carpet are of a light cream color; and there is a vase of honeysuckle on the little light-stand. Nothing could be more faultless, you see.

Now, step into the nursery; the floor is strewed with play-things; thank God, there’s a child in the house! There is a broken doll; a torn picture-book; a little wreath of oak leaves; a dandelion chain; some willow tassels; a few acorns; a little red shoe, full of parti-colored pebbles; the wing of a little blue-bird; two little, speckled eggs, on a tuft of moss; and a little orphan chicken, nestling in a basket of cotton wool, in the corner. Then, there is a work-basket of Ruth’s with a little dress of Daisy’s, partly finished, and a dicky of Harry’s, with the needle still sticking in it, which the little gypsey wife intends finishing when she comes back from her wood ramble.

The old lady begins to think she must give it up; when, luckily, her eye falls on a crouching “Venus,” in the corner. Saints and angels! why, she has never been to the dress-makers! There’s a text, now! What a pity there is no appreciative audience to see the glow of indignation with which those half averted eyes regard the undraped goddess!

“Oh, Harry! is this the end of all my teachings? Well, it is all Ruth’s doings — all Ruth’s doings. Harry is to be pitied, not blamed;” and the old lady takes up, at length, her triumphant march for home.

“Hallo! what are you doing there?” exclaimed the doctor, looking over the fence at a laborer, at work in one of Harry’s fields.

“Ploughing this bit o’ ground, sir. Mr. Hall told me to be sure and get it finished before he came home from the city this afthernoon.”

“Nonsense!” replied the doctor, “I was born sometime before my son Harry; put up your plough, and lay that bit of stone wall yonder; that needs to be done first.”

“I’m thinking Masther Hall won’t be afther liking it if I do, sir,” said Pat; “I had my orders for the day’s work before masther went to the city, sir, this morning.”

“Pooh, pooh,” said the old man, unchaining the horse from the plough, and turning him loose in the pasture; “young folks think old folks are fools; old folks know young folks to be so.”

Pat eyed the doctor, scratched his head, and began slowly to lay the stone wall.

“What’s that fellow doing over yonder?” said the doctor to Pat.

“Planting corn, yer honor.”

“Corn? ha! ha! city farming! Good. Corn? That’s just the spot for potatoes. H-a-l-l-o there! Don’t plant any more corn in that spot, John; it never’ll come to anything – never.”

“But, Mr. Hall?” said John, hesitatingly, leaning on his hoe-handle.

“Harry? Oh, never mind him. He has seen more ledgers than corn. Corn? Ha! that’s good. You can go cart that load of gravel up the hill. What a fortunate thing for Harry, that I am here to oversee things. This amateur farming is pretty play enough; but the way it sinks the money is more curious than profitable. I wonder, now, if that tree is grafted right. I’ll take off the ligatures and see. That hedge won’t grow, I’m certain; the down-east cedars thrive the best for hedges. I may as well pull these up, and tell Harry to get some of the other kind;” and the doctor pulled them up by the roots, and threw them over the fence.

“Time for papa to come,” said little Daisy, seating herself on the low door-step; “the sun has crept way round to the big apple-tree;” and Daisy shook back her hair, and settling her little elbows on her knees, sat with her chin in her palms, dreamily watching the shifting clouds. A butterfly alights on a blade of grass near her: Daisy springs up, her long hair floating like a veil about her shoulders, and her tiny feet scarce bending the clover blossoms, and tiptoes carefully along in pursuit.

He’s gone, Daisy, but never mind; like many other coveted treasures, he would lose his brilliancy if caught. Daisy has found something else; she closes her hand over it, and returns to her old watch-post on the door-step. She seats herself again, and loosing her tiny hold, out creeps a great, bushy, yellow caterpillar. Daisy places him carefully on the back of her little, blue-veined hand, and he commences his travels up the polished arm, to the little round shoulder. When he reaches the lace sleeve, Daisy’s laugh rings out like a robin’s carol; then she puts him back, to retravel the same smooth road again.

“Oh, Daisy! Daisy!” said Ruth, stepping up behind her, “what an ugly playfellow; put him down, do darling; I cannot bear to see him on your arm.”

“Why — God made him,” said little Daisy, with sweet, upturned eyes of wonder.

“True, darling,” said Ruth, in a hushed whisper, kissing the child’s brow, with a strange feeling of awe. “Keep him, Daisy, dear, if you like.”

“Please, sir, I’ll be afther leaving the night,” said John, scraping out his hind foot, as Harry drew rein on Romeo, and halted under a large apple-tree.

“Leave?” exclaimed Harry, patting Romeo’s neck; “you seemed a contented fellow enough when I left for the city this morning. Don’t your wages suit? What’s in the wind now? out with it, man.”

John scratched his head, kicked away a pebble with the toe of his brogan, looked up, and looked down, and finally said, (lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, as he glanced in the direction of the doctor’s cottage;) “It’s the ould gintleman, sir, savin’ yer presence. It is not two masthers Pat would be afther having;” and Pat narrated the affair of the plough.

Harry bit his lip, and struck Romeo a little quick cut with his riding-whip. Harry was one of the most dutiful of sons, and never treated his father with disrespect; he had chosen a separate home, that he might be master of it; and this old annoyance in a new shape was very provoking. “Pat,” said he at length, “there is only one master here; when I give you an order, you are to stick to it, till you get a different one from me. D’ye understand?”

“By the Holy Mother, I’ll do it,” said Pat, delightedly resuming his hoe with fresh vigor.

“That’s the fourth gig that has been tied to Harry’s fence, since dinner,” said the old lady. “I hope Harry’s business will continue to prosper. Company, company, company. And there’s Ruth, as I live, romping round that meadow, without a bit of a bonnet. Now she’s climbing a cherry-tree. A married woman climbing a cherry-tree! Doctor, do you hear that?”

“Shoot ’em down,” said the doctor, abstractedly, without lifting his eyes from the Almanac.

“Shoot who down?” said the old lady, shaking him by the shoulder. “I said that romp of a Ruth was up in a cherry-tree.”

“Oh, I thought you were talking of those thievish robins stealing the cherries,” said the doctor; “as to Ruth I’ve given her up long ago; she never will settle down to anything. Yesterday, as I was taking a walk over Harry’s farm to see if things were not all going to the dogs, I saw her down in the meadow yonder, with her shoes and stockings off, wading through a little brook to get at some flowers, which grew on the other side. Half an hour after she came loitering up the road, with her bonnet hanging on the back of her neck, and her apron crammed full of grasses, and herbs, and branches, and all sorts of green trash. Just then the minister came along. I was glad of it. Good enough for her, thinks I to myself; she’ll blush for once. Well, what do you think she did, Mis. Hall?”