Cynthia Leverett was making great improvement in every respect.  She was no longer the thin, wan little thing that had come from India.  She had outgrown her clothes, which was a good sign, Eunice said.

Elizabeth made a stand for good wearing ginghams and plain cloths for winter.

“There’s that gray cloth of mine that’s too nice to hack around for every day.  I could have it dyed, I suppose, but I’ve two nice black stuff dresses beside my silk, and that other one Chilian gave me that must have cost a sight of money; it’s thick enough to almost stand alone.  I can’t bear those sleazy stuffs that come from India.  But I’ve wished more than once that I had the money it cost, out at interest.  And the cloth ”

“It isn’t a very pretty color,” ventured Eunice timidly.

“What does that matter for a child?  It won’t show dirt easily.  And it is settled that she is going to school, I’m thankful to say.”

The dress in question was not a clear, pretty gray, but had an ugly yellow tint.

“She certainly is rich enough to buy her own clothes, or have them bought for her.  I’d dip that dress over a good deal darker brown.  You know Chilian didn’t like it for you, and he will not for her.”

Eunice was amazed at her own protest.  The child had always been prettily attired.  And more attention was being paid to children’s clothes she noticed in church on Sunday, and after she had indulged in such sinful wanderings, she read the chapter in Isaiah where the prophet denounced the “round tires like the moon, the bonnets and the head bands, the mantles, and wimples, and crisping pins, and changeable suits of apparel,” and other vanities, and predicted dire punishments for them.

Mrs. Turner had called according to her proposal.  She brought her little daughter Arabella, commonly called Bella.  Cousin Chilian was out in the garden with Cynthia, and received her with his usual kindly cordiality, inviting them to walk into the house.  The parlor shutters were tightly closed, and Mrs. Turner abhorred state parlors.  Hers was always open, for guests were no rarity.

“Why can’t we sit out here a spell?  It is so delightful to have this garden in view.  And your clematis is a perfect show.  Then let the children run around and get acquainted.  How are the ladies?”

She seated herself on the bench at the side of the porch.

“I will call them,” he said.  “But hadn’t you better walk in?”

“Oh, we can’t stay very long.  I’ve been waiting for the ladies to return my last call, but we were down in this vicinity, so I stopped.  You see, I don’t always stand on ceremony.  And we have been so interested in your little girl.  I saw her in Merrit’s with Miss Winn.”

He summoned the ladies, and then he returned to the guests.  The children were both down the path Bella talking and gesticulating, and Cynthia laughing.

Mrs. Turner was in nowise formal.  She talked of Mr. Turner’s business he was a shipbuilder of the rapid strides Salem was making; indeed one would hardly know it for old Salem of the witch days.  And people’s ideas had broadened out so, softened from their rigidity, “though some of the old folks are thinking the very trade we are so proud of is going to ruin our character and morals, and fill us with pride and vanity.  But I say to Mr. Turner the people did their hard work and bore their deprivations bravely all through the Revolution, and we can’t go back and make their lot easier by depriving ourselves of comforts, or even pleasures.”

There might be some casuistry in that, but there was truth as well.

Then he asked if she knew of any nice schools for girls.  Where did hers go?

“Oh, to Madam Torrey’s.  That’s up Church Street.  Maybe it would be too far in bad weather, though our girls don’t mind it.  Alice is thirteen, but she’s been there since she was eight, and Bella has been going these two years.  The boys are at the Bertram School, and your neighbor Bentley Upham goes there.  He’s a nice boy.  But Madam Torrey is a fine woman.  She has an assistant, and a woman comes in to teach the French class.  Then I don’t suppose everybody will approve of this, but there is going to be a dancing-class out of school hours, yet no one is compelled to send their children to that.  There’s fine needlework, too, and fancy knitting, indeed about all that it is necessary for a girl to know.  And the children are all from good families; that is quite an important point.”

“I think I must walk over and see her.”

“Do.  I am sure you will be pleased.  The walk will be the only objection.  Isn’t she delicate?”

“She wasn’t well last winter.  She took a cold.  She was not used to our bleak winters.  And there was her father’s death.  She had counted so much on his return.”

“It was very sad.  She looks well now.”

Then the ladies made their appearance.  Elizabeth apologized for Chilian not asking her into the parlor.  “It looked inhospitable.”

“It was my fault.  The stoop was so tempting.  A shady porch in the afternoon is a luxury.  We take our sewing out there; that is, Alice and I, and sometimes the guests.  How lovely your vines are!  And your garden is a regular show place, quite worth coming to see if there were no other charm.  And, Miss Leverett, I hear you have been making the most beautiful white quilt there is in Salem.”

“Oh, no.  But as nice as any.  And it was a sight of work.  I don’t know as I’d do it again.  I’ve no chick or child to leave it to.”

“May I come over some day and see it?  Not that I shall do anything of the kind.  With four big boys to mend for and the two girls, I have my hands full.”

Then they talked about putting up fruit and making jellies, and Mrs. Turner said she must go over to the Uphams.  She heard that Polly was getting to be such a nice, smart girl, and had worked the bottom of her white frock and a round cape to match.  Then she called Bella.

“Oh, can’t I go over with them?” pleaded Cynthia.

Cousin Chilian nodded.  Elizabeth rose stiffly and went in.  Eunice pulled out her knitting.  It was so lovely here.  There were the warmth and perfume of summer and the rich fragrance of ripening fruits and grass mown for feed, not snipped with a lawn-mower, such things had not been heard of even in the rapidly improving Salem.

“There are some countries where people live out of doors nearly all the time,” began Eunice reflectively.  “Well, they do a good deal in India.  But I think this is in Europe.  And this is so lovely, so restful.  But I’m afraid you have affronted Elizabeth by not insisting Mrs. Turner should walk into the parlor.  Though really we had not returned her last call.  I do wish Elizabeth could find some time to get out.  I don’t see why there should be so much work.”

“Couldn’t you have some one to help?”

“Well, it isn’t just the cooking and kitchenwork.  And no one could suit her there.  She’s up in that old garret toiling, and moiling, and packing away enough things to furnish an inn.  We shall never want them.  And there’s your mother’s, and some of your grandmother’s, blankets.”

“The New England thrift is rather too thrifty sometimes,” he commented dryly.

Cynthia staid after Mrs. Turner made her adieus.  Indeed, as it was nearing supper-time, he walked over for her.  She and Betty were in the wide-seated swing and Ben was swinging them so high that Betty, used as she was to it, gave now and then little squeals.  Chilian held up his hand and Ben let the “cat die,” which meant the swing stopping of itself.

“Oh, Mr. Leverett, can’t Cynthy stay to tea?  I’ll run and ask mother.”

“Not to-day.  She had better come home now.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Bentley disappointedly.

“Yes, I had better go.  And I’ve had such a lovely time.  Cousin Chilian, can’t I come over again?”

How pretty she looked with her shining eyes, her rosy cheeks, and her entreating lips!  What would she coax out of men as she grew older!

“Oh, yes; any time they want you.”

“Well, we’d like her every day!” cried Ben eagerly.  “And isn’t it splendid that she’s grown so well and strong, and can run and play, and have good out-of-doors times?  Though I used to like it in the winter up in your room, and Mr. Price said he never knew a boy to improve so in Latin.”

Bentley made a graceful bow to Mr. Leverett.

“Oh,” said Cynthia, skipping along in exuberant joy, “children are nice, aren’t they?  You can’t have much fun alone by yourself, and the days are so long when you go in to Boston.”

“I wonder if you would like to try school again?”

“Yes, I think I would;” after a pause.  “You see,” with a gravity that sat oddly upon her, “I’m not so afraid as I was, and I have more sense.  And I know things more evenly than I did.  I can write now quite well, and I know most of the tables, though division does bother me.  And I can spell all but the very difficult words.  I don’t think any one would laugh at me now.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” he answered decisively.

“I shouldn’t like little boys, but I wouldn’t mind them as big as Bentley.  And, oh, I wish we had a swing.  And they have a real sailors’ hammock, such as they have on shipboard.  It’s delightful under the trees.”

“I think we can manage that.”

“Well, if your head isn’t tousled!” cried Elizabeth.  “It looks like a brush heap.  Get it fixed, for supper is all ready.  Why didn’t you stay?” the last ironically.

“Cousin Chilian thought I had better not.  They did want me to.”

“Are you sure they wanted you to?”

“Why, yes,” she answered in ignorance of the sarcasm.

She walked up and down the garden path with Cousin Chilian and asked about the school, was glad when she found Bella and her sister Alice went there.  Now and then she gave two or three skips and pulled on the hand she held so tightly.  He had never seen her in quite such glee, and how charming she was!

“Chilian, bring that child in out of the dew.  Next thing she’ll be in for a winter’s cold,” said the severe voice.

The interview with Madam Torrey was very satisfactory.  Chilian asked Miss Winn to go out and buy what was needed and get it made.  They went over to Mrs. Turner’s one day and took the school in on their way.

“When it rains Silas can take you and come for you.  I think the walk will not tire you out.”

“Oh, no; I don’t get tired out now.”

It was Miss Winn’s place to look after the child, of course, but Elizabeth felt in some way defrauded.  She wished Cynthia had been poor and dependent upon them.  Then she would stand a chance to be brought up in a useful manner.

Chilian took her to school the first morning.  Miss Winn was to come for her.  She had been rather shy at first.  But Bella Turner told the girls about her, how she had been born in Salem, and gone to Calcutta when only a few months old, come and gone again in her father’s ship, and he was Captain Leverett, and then returned to America.  He was to come afterward, but he had died.  And Mr. Chilian Leverett, who was something in Harvard College, was her guardian.  And she was to have ever so much money when she was a young lady.

Any other child might have been spoiled by the attentions lavished upon her.  The girls thought her curly hair so pretty, and her hands were so small, with their dainty, tapering fingers.  Then she found one of the girls, Lois Brinsmaid, lived in Central Avenue, so there was no further question of troubling any one.  Cousin Chilian had given her a good foundation for study and she was eager for knowledge of all sorts, except that of the needle.

Then autumn began to merge into winter and there were storms and bleak winds, and some days she staid at home.  She caught light colds, but Chilian and Miss Winn were very watchful.

She went to the Turners one afternoon and staid to tea, and the big boys hovered about her like bees.  She was not forward or aggressive, but there was a sort of charming sweetness about her.  When she raised her lovely eyes they seemed to appeal to every heart, though they never went very far with Cousin Elizabeth.

One day she came home and found the house in a great state of excitement.  Elizabeth had started to go down into the cellar with both hands full.  She had been a little dizzy for several days, and meant to take a dose of herb tea, boneset being her great stand-by, when she could find time.  Whether it was the vertigo, or she slipped, she lay there unconscious, and they sent for Doctor Prescott.

Silas and the doctor carried her upstairs, and the latter brought her out of the faint.  But when she started to stand up, she toppled over and fainted again.

“There’s something quite serious.  Let us carry her up to her room, and you women undress her.  Her legs are sound, so the trouble is higher up.”

Then he found her hip was broken, a bad thing at any time of life, but at her age doubly so.  And he sent for Doctor Lapham to help him set it.  It was very bad.  They were still there when Chilian came home.

“I’m afraid she’s laid up for a year or so;” and the doctor shook his head ominously.

“Do your very best for her,” besought Chilian.

He said to Eunice, “Now you must have some one.  You can’t carry on the house alone.”

“If it is the same to you, Chilian, I’d rather have a nurse.  There’s Mother Taft, who is good and strong, and used to nursing.  She’s willing to help about a little, too.”

“Just as you think best.  I want every care taken of her.”

For a month it was a very serious matter.  They thought the spine was somewhat injured as well.  And Elizabeth knew they could never get on without her.

“I expect I shall find the house in such a state when I do get about, it will take me all summer to right it.  You never were as thorough as I could wish, Eunice.”

Miss Winn begged that she might be of service.  She had so little to do, or to think about, that time hung heavy on her hands, now that Cynthia was in school.  For then school hours were from nine to five.  And the child was getting so handy caring for herself.  She curled her hair and put on her clothes, brought her shoes down every evening for Silas to black, and sometimes wiped the tea dishes while Miss Winn washed them.  Somehow there didn’t seem so much work to do.  Eunice didn’t always have two kinds of cake for supper, nor a great shelf full of pies for Silas to take home.  There was plenty of everything and no one complained.

They found Mother Taft invaluable.  She was about the average height, and had long arms, and strength according.  Then she had a most excellent way with her.  When Elizabeth groaned that they never could get on without her, and she must be up and about before everything went to “wrack and ruin,” Mother Taft said: 

“The kitchen looks like a new pin.  There’s no signs of ruin that I can see.  Meals are good, cake fine, house clean.  When you get downstairs you’ll think you haven’t been out of the harness more’n a week.”

“A likely story,” Elizabeth moaned.

Cynthia went through March very successfully, but with the first warm spell in April she caught a cold and coughed, and Chilian was almost wild about her, his nerves having been worn somewhat by Elizabeth’s mishap.  But after ten days or so she came around all right and was eager for school again.

She was sitting in her old place by the window late one afternoon and he had been reading some poems to her a volume lately come from England.

“Cousin Chilian,” she said, “will you tell me what true relation we are?”

“Why, what has put that in your head?”

“I want to know.”  She said it persuasively.

“Well, it isn’t very near after all.  My father and yours were cousins.  My father was the son of the oldest brother, your father the son of the youngest, that stretched them quite far apart.  When I wasn’t much more than a baby Anthony came to live with us, and was like an elder brother to me.  Father was very fond of him.  But he would go to sea and he made a fine sailor and captain.  Then he was married from here, and you were born here.”

“The girls sometimes say, ‘your uncle.’  I wonder if you would like to have me call you uncle?”

Something in him protested.  He could not tell what it was, unless an odd feeling that it made him seem older.  He wished he were ten years younger, and he could give no reason for that either.

“I think I like the ‘cousin’ best;” after some deliberation.

“And it is so lovely to be dear to some one, very dear.  I like Rachel, she’s been almost a mother to me, and I like Cousin Eunice for her sweet ways.  But I’ve no one of my very own, and so I’m very glad to be dear to you.  It is like a ship being anchored to something safe and strong.”

She came and put her arms about his neck and kissed him.  He drew her down on his knee.  She was her mother’s child, and her mother had been dear to him, his first love, his only love so far.

Oh, how would the garden get made and the house cleaned, the blankets and the winter clothing aired and put away, those in use washed?  Eunice and Miss Winn went up in the garret one day and swept and dusted, not giving a whole week to it.

“Now,” said Mother Taft, “I’m going to take a holiday off.  I’m tired of puttering round in the sick room, and she’s so much better now that she doesn’t keep one on the jump.  And I’m going to wash them there blankets and you can pack them away, so there’ll be one thing less to worry about.”

“But Silas’ wife would come and do it.  And a holiday!  Why don’t you go off somewhere ”

“I want to do it.”

And do it she did.  Some way the house did get cleaned.  “After a fashion,” Elizabeth said.  And the garden was made.  Chilian and Eunice trimmed up roses.  Cynthia and Miss Winn planted seeds.  There were always some things that wintered over sweet Williams, lilies of various sorts, pinks, laurels, some spiraeas, snowball and syringas, hosts of lilacs that made a fragrant hedge.  Cynthia thought it had never been so lovely before.  She wore a nosegay at her throat, and in her belt just a few; she had the fine taste that never overloaded.  She and Cousin Chilian used to walk up and down the fragrant paths after supper and no one fretted at them about the dew.  Sometimes Rachel or Eunice would bring out a dainty scarf.  And how many things they found to talk about.  She loved to dwell on the times with her father, and it seemed as if she remembered a great deal more about her mother than she did at first, but she never imagined it was Cousin Chilian’s memory that helped out hers.

She had enjoyed the school very much.  There were no high up “isms” or “ologies” for girls in those days.  She learned about her own country, for already there were some histories written, and the causes that led to the war.  Some of the girls had grandmothers who had lived through those exciting years, and made the relation of incidents much more interesting than any dry written account that was mostly dates and names.  What heroes they had been!  And the old Mayflower story and John Alden, and others who were to inspire a poet’s pen.

Then there was the dread story of the witchcraft that had led Salem astray.  Cousin Chilian would never have it mentioned, and had taken away several books he did not want her to see.  But the girls had gone to some of the old places, where witches had been taken from their homes and cast into jail, the Court House where they had been tried, and Gallows Hill, that most people shunned even now.

One rainy evening, after her lessons had been studied, Cynthia went downstairs.  Rachel had been fomenting her face for the toothache and was lying down.  Cousin Chilian had gone to a town-meeting, and the house seemed so still that she almost believed she might see the ghost or witch of the stories she had heard.  No one was in the sitting-room, or the kitchen proper, but she heard voices in what was called the summer kitchen, a roughly constructed place with a stone chimney and a great swinging crane.  Here they did much of the autumn work, for Elizabeth was quite a stickler for having a common place to save something nicer.

Mother Taft always smoked a pipe of tobacco in the evening.  “It soothed her,” she said, after her tussle of fixing her patient for the night, “and made her sleep better.”

“And it’s my opinion if Miss ’Lisbeth could just have a good smoke at night ’twould do her more good than the doctor’s powders.”

“Why, Cynthy!” Cousin Eunice exclaimed.

“I was lonesome.  Rachel’s gone to sleep, Cousin Eunice were there such things as witches over a hundred years ago?”

Eunice glanced at Mother Taft.  Witchcraft was a tabooed subject, yet it lingered in more than one imaginative mind, though few would confess a belief in it.

“Well, people may talk as they like, but there’s many queer things in the world.  Now there’s that falling sickness, as they call it.  Jabez Green has two children that roll on the floor, and froth at the mouth, and their eyes bulge most out of their heads.  They’re lacking, we all know.  But when they come out of the fit they tell queer things that they saw, and I do suppose it was that way then.  They do act as if they were bewitched.”

We know this misfortune now as epilepsy, but medical science in the earlier century did not understand that, nor incipient insanity.

“It was very strange,” said Eunice rather awesomely.  “And Mr. Parris was a minister and a good man, yet it broke out in his family.”

“But he had them slaves, and in their own land black people do awful things to each other.  But it was strange; again, after his wife was accused, Governor Phipps ordered there should be no more punished and all set free, and then the thing stopped.”

“And it wasn’t real witchcraft?” said Cynthia.

“Well, I wouldn’t undertake to say.  There were witches in Bible times and they kept themselves mighty close, for they were not to be allowed to live.  And Saul had a hard time getting anything out of the witch of Endor, you know, Miss Eunice.”

Eunice nodded.  They were trenching on forbidden ground.

“My grandmother believed in them and she was a good God-fearing woman, too.  You see what made it worse for Salem was their sending so many here for trial from the places round.  Grandfather lived way up above Topsfield, had a farm there and ’twas woods all around.  No one troubled them then, but afterward well, they’d cleared the woods and built a road and new houses were put up around, for some people were glad enough to get out of Salem.  There was a woman named Martha Goodno, who had been in prison, and people were shy of her.  Grandmother had two cows, and folks turned them out in the woods then.  One of them went in Martha’s garden, but she spied her out and drove her off before much damage was done.  The fence had been broken down and she laid it to the cow, but people said it had been down for days.  Well, something got the matter with the cow.  She gave good rich milk and mother saved it for butter.  But when she churned there came queer streaks in it that looked like blood.  She doctored the cow, although it seemed well enough.  One day a neighbor was in and the same thing happened.  ‘Throw some in the fire,’ said the neighbor, ’and if you hear of any one being burned you’ll know who is the witch.’  So grandmother threw two dippers full in the fire and she said it made an awful smell.  The rest she dumped out of doors, she wouldn’t feed it to the pigs.  About an hour afterward another neighbor came in.  Grandmother made a salve that was splendid for burns and cuts.  ‘Mis’ Denfield,’ she says, ’won’t you come over to Martha Goodno’s and bring your pot of salve.  She’s burned herself dreadfully drawin’ the coals out of the oven, set her dress on fire just at the waist.’  So mother went over and found it was a pretty bad, sure enough burn, and she was groaning just fit to die.  Mother spread a piece of linen and laid it on and left her some salve.  ‘What did I tell you?’ says mother’s neighbor, and they nodded their heads.  But the queer thing was that after that the cow was all right and she never had any more trouble.

“After she was well she took a spite against another neighbor, who used to spin flax and sell the thread.  Then her flax took to cutting up queer, and would break off, and turn yellow, and trouble her dreadfully.  Mother was there one afternoon when it bothered so.  ’Just throw a handful in the fire,’ says mother.  ‘Fire’s purifying;’ and she did.  They sent to mother again for salve, for Martha had scalded her right hand.  Then the folks talked it over and a letter was written and tucked under her door, warning her to move, and the next-door man bought the place.  I’ve heard grandmother tell this over she lived to be ninety, and she was a good Christian woman, and she never added nor took away one iota.  There, I oughtn’t have told all this before the child; she’s white as a ghost.”

“You must go to bed this minute,” exclaimed Eunice.  “I’ll go up with you.”