The Iron Woman | Page 8

tried to think of other personal matters.
"My mother's dead. And my father's dead."
"So's mine," David matched her, proudly. "I'm an adopted child."
"I have a pair of red shoes with white buttons," she said. David, unable
to think of any possession of his own to cap either bite or boots, was
smitten into gloomy silence.
In spite of the landlord's disapproval of his tenant's rings, the
acquaintance of the two families grew. Mr. Ferguson had to see Mrs.
Richie again about those "sashes," or what not. His calls were always
on business--but though he talked of greenhouses, and she talked of
knocking out an extra window in the nursery so that her little boy could
have more sunshine, they slipped after a while into personalities: Mrs.
Richie had no immediate family; her--her husband had died nearly
three years before. Since then she had been living in St. Louis. She had
come now to Mercer because she wanted to be nearer to a friend, an old
clergyman, who lived in a place called Old Chester.
"I think it's about twenty miles up the river," she said. "That's where I
found David. I--I had lost a little boy, and David had lost his mother, so

we belonged together. It doesn't make any difference to us, that he isn't
my own, does it, David?"
"Yes'm," said David,
"David! Why won't you ever say what is expected of you? We don't
know anybody in Mercer," she went on, with a shy, melancholy smile,
"except Elizabeth." And at her kind look the little girl, who had tagged
along behind her uncle, snuggled up to the maternal presence, and
rubbed her cheek against the white hand which had the pretty rings on
it. "I am so glad to have somebody for David to play with," Mrs. Richie
said, looking down at the little nestling thing, who at that moment
stopped nestling, and dropping down on toes and finger-tips, loped
up--on very long hind-legs, to the confusion of her elders, who
endeavored not to see her peculiar attitude--and, putting a paw into
David's pocket, abstracted a marble. There was an instant explosion, in
which David, after securing his property through violent exertions,
sought, as a matter of pure justice, to pull the bear's hair. But when Mrs.
Richie interfered, separating the combatants with horrified apologies
for her young man's conduct, Elizabeth's squeals stopped abruptly. She
stood panting, her eyes still watering with David's tug at her hair; the
dimple in her right cheek began to lengthen into a hard line.
"You are very naughty, David," said Mrs. Richie, sternly; "you must
beg Elizabeth's pardon at once!" At which Elizabeth burst out:
"Stop! Don't scold him. It was my fault. I did it--taking his marble.
I'll--I'll bite my arm if you scold David!"
"Elizabeth!" protested her uncle; "I'm ashamed of you!"
But Elizabeth was indifferent to his shame; she was hugging David
frantically. "I hate, I hate, I hate your mother--if she does have rings!"
Her face was so convulsed with rage that Mrs. Richie actually recoiled
before it; Elizabeth, still clamoring, saw that involuntary start of horror.
Instantly she was calm; but she shrank away almost out of the room. It
seemed as if at that moment some veil, cold and impenetrable, fell
between the gentle woman and the fierce, pathetic child--a veil that was

not to be lifted until, in some mysterious way, life should make them
change places.
The two elders looked at each other, Robert Ferguson with meager
amusement; Mrs. Richie still grave at the remembrance of that furious
little face. "What did she mean about 'biting her arm'?" she asked, after
Elizabeth had been sent home, the bewildered David being told to
accompany her to the door.
"I believe she bites herself when she gets angry," Elizabeth's uncle said;
"Miss White said she had quite a sore place on her arm last winter,
because she bit it so often. It's of no consequence," he added, knocking
his glasses off fiercely. Again Mrs. Richie looked shocked. "She is my
brother's child," he said, briefly; "he died some years ago. He left her to
me." And Mrs. Richie knew instinctively that the bequest had not been
welcome. "Miss White looks after her," he said, putting his glasses on
again, carefully, with both hands; "she calls her her 'Lamb,' though a
more unlamblike person than Elizabeth I never met. She has a little
school for her and the two Maitland youngsters in the top of my house.
Miss White is otherwise known as Cherry-pie. Elizabeth, I am
informed, loves cherry-pie; also, she loves Miss White: ergo!" he ended,
with his snort of a laugh. Then he had a sudden thought: "Why don't
you let David come to Miss White for lessons? I've no doubt she could