Pirate Gold | Page 7

his father's recent death).
"It seems so," said Mr. James Bowdoin (our Mr. James), who by this
time had his own little girls to look after.
"Bring the poor child down to Nahant next time you come to spend the
day, and give her a chance to play with the children."

VII.
James McMurtagh, with "the old man" and "the mother," lived in a

curious little house on Salem Street, at the North End. Probably they
liked it because it might have been a little house in some provincial
town at home. To its growing defects of neighborhood they were
oblivious. It was a square two-story brick box: on the right of the entry,
the parlor, never used before, but now set apart for Mercedes; behind, a
larger square room, which was dining-room and kitchen combined, and
where the McMurtaghs, father and son, were wont to sit in their
shirt-sleeves after supper and smoke their pipes; above were four tiny
bedrooms.
Within the parlor the little lady, as Jamie already called her, was given
undisputed sway; and a strange transmogrification there she made. The
pink shells were collected from the mantel, and piled, with others she
had got, to represent a grotto, in one corner of the room; the worked
samplers were thought ugly, and banished upstairs. In another corner
was a sort of bower, made of bright-colored pieces of stuff the child
had begged from the neighbors, and called by her the "Witch's Cave;"
here little Mercedes loved to sit and tell the fortunes of her friends.
These were mostly Jamie's horny-handed friends; the women neighbors
took no part in all these doings, and gave it out loudly that the child
was being spoiled. She went, with other boys and girls, to a small
dame-school on the other side of Bowdoin Square; for Jamie would not
hear of a public school. Here she learned quickly to read, write, and do
a little embroidering, and gained much knowledge of human nature.
One thing that they would not allow the child was her outlandish name:
Mercy she was called,--Mercy McMurtagh. Perhaps we may venture
still to call her Mercedes. The child's hair and eyes were getting darker,
but it was easy to see she would be a blonde d'Espagne. Jamie secretly
believed she had a strain of noble blood, though openly he would not
have granted such a thing's existence. We, with our wider racial
knowledge, might have recognized points that came from Gothic
Spain,--the deep eyes of starlight blue, so near to black, and hair that
was a brown with dust of gold. But her feet and hands were all of
Andalusia. Jamie had hardly spoken to a woman in his life,--he used to
think of himself as deformed. And now this little girl was all his own!

So for a year or two the child was happy. Then came that day, never to
be forgotten by her, of the visit to old Mr. Bowdoin at Nahant. They
went down in a steamboat together,--two little Bowdoin girls, younger
than Mercedes, a boy, Harley, and a cousin, who was Dorothea Dowse.
At first Mercedes did not think much of the Bowdoin children; they
wore plain dresses, alike in color, while our heroine had on every
ribbon that was hers. They went down under care of Jamie McMurtagh,
dismissed at the wharf by Mr. James Bowdoin, who had a stick of
candy for each. Business was doing even then; but old Mr. Bowdoin
was not too busy to spend a summer's day at home with the children.
His favorite son, James, had married to his mind; and money came so
easy in those times!
Miss Dowse was fifteen, and she called her uncle's clerk Jamie; so she
elevated her look when she came to our Mercedes. She wore gloves,
and satin slippers with ribbons crossed at the ankle, and silk stockings.
Mercedes had no silk stockings and no gloves. Miss Dowse had
rejected the proffered stick of candy, and Mercedes sought a chance to
give hers away, one end unsucked. There was this boy in the
party,--Harleston Bowdoin,--so she made a favor of it and gave it to
him.
They were playing on the rail of the steamboat, and Jamie was sitting
respectfully apart inside. The little Bowdoin girls were sucking at their
candy contentedly; Mercedes was climbing with the Bowdoin boy upon
the rail, and he called his cousin Dolly to join them.
"I can't; the sun would make my hands so brown if I took off my
gloves," said that young lady. "Besides, it's so common, playing with
the passengers."
There was a double sting in this; for Mercedes was not just "a
passenger," but of their party. She walked into the cabin with what
dignity she could maintain, and then