“You’ve got the black dog on your shoulder, this morning; that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Wealthy.

This metaphorical black dog meant a bad humor.  Eyebright had waked up cross and irritable.  What made her wake up cross I am not wise enough to explain.  The old-fashioned doctors would probably have ascribed it to indigestion, the new-fashioned ones to nerves or malaria or a “febrile tendency”; Deacon Bury, I think, would have called it “Original Sin,” and Wealthy, who did not mince matters, dubbed it an attack of the Old Scratch, which nothing but a sound shaking could cure.  Very likely all these guesses were partly right and all partly wrong.  When our bodies get out of order, our souls are apt to become disordered too, and at such times there always seem to be little imps of evil lurking near, ready to seize the chance, rush in, fan the small embers of discontent to a flame, make cross days crosser, and turn bad beginnings into worse endings.

The morning’s mischances had begun with Eyebright’s being late to breakfast; ­a thing which always annoyed her father very much.  Knowing this, she made as much haste as possible, and ran downstairs with her boots half buttoned, fastening her apron as she went.  She was in too great a hurry to look where she was going, and the result was that presently she tripped and fell, bumping her head and tearing the skirt of her frock half across.  This was bad luck indeed, for Wealthy, she knew, would make her darn it as a punishment, and that meant at least an hour’s hard work indoors on one of the loveliest days that ever shone.  She picked herself up and went into the sitting-room, pouting, and by no means disposed to enjoy the lecture on punctuality, which papa made haste to give, and which was rather longer and sharper than it would otherwise have been, because Eyebright looked so very sulky and obstinate while listening to it.

You will all be shocked at this account, but I am not sorry to show Eyebright to you on one of her naughty days.  All of us have such days sometimes, and to represent her as possessing no faults would be to put her at a distance from all of you; in fact, I should not like her so well myself.  She has been pretty good, so far, in this story; but she was by no means perfect, for which let us be thankful; because a perfect child would be an unnatural thing, whom none of us could quite believe in or understand!  Eyebright was a dear little girl, and for all her occasional naughtiness, had plenty of lovable qualities about her; and I am glad to say she was not often so naughty as on this day.

When a morning begins in this way, every thing seems to go wrong with us, as if on purpose.  It was so with Eyebright.  Her mother, who was very poorly, found fault with her breakfast.  She wanted some hotter tea, and a slice of toast a little browner and cut very thin.  These were simple requests, and on any other day Eyebright would have danced off gleefully to fulfil them.  To-day she was annoyed at having to go, and moved slowly and reluctantly.  She did not say that she felt waiting on her mother to be a trouble, but her face, and the expression of her shoulders, and her dull, dawdling movements said it for her; and poor Mrs. Bright, who was not used to such unwillingness on the part of her little daughter, felt it so much that she shed a few tears over the second cup of tea after it was brought.  This dismayed Eyebright, but it also exasperated her.  She would not take any notice, but stood by in silence till her mother had finished, and then, without a word, carried the tray downstairs.  A sort of double mood was upon her.  Down below the anger was a feeling of keen remorse for what she had done, and a voice inside seemed to say:  “Oh dear, how sorry I am going to be for this by and by!” But she would not let herself be sorry then, and stifled the voice by saying, half aloud, as she went along:  “I don’t care.  It’s too bad of mother.  I wish she wouldn’t.”

Wealthy met her at the stair-foot.

“How long you’ve been!” she said, taking the tray from her.

“I can’t be any quicker when I have to keep going for more things,” said Eyebright.

“Nobody said you could,” retorted Wealthy, speaking crossly herself, because Eyebright’s tone was cross.  “Mercy on me!  How did you tear your frock like that?  You’ll have to darn it yourself, you know; that’s the rule.  Fetch your work-box as soon as you’ve done the cups and saucers.”

Eyebright almost replied “I won’t,” but she did not quite dare, and walked, without speaking, into the sitting-room, where the table was made ready for dish-washing, with a tub of hot water, towels, a bit of soap, and a little mop.  Since vacation began, Wealthy had allowed her to wash the breakfast things on Mondays and Tuesdays, days on which she herself was particularly busy.

Ordinarily, Eyebright was very proud to be trusted with this little job.  She worked carefully and nicely, and had proved herself capable, but to-day her fingers seemed all thumbs.  She set the cups away without drying the bottoms, so that they made wet rings on the shelves; she only half rinsed the teapot, left a bit of soap in its spout, and ended by breaking a saucer.  Wealthy scolded her, she retorted, and then Wealthy made the speech, which I have quoted, about the black dog.

Very slowly and unwillingly Eyebright sat down to darn her frock.  It was a long, jagged rent, requiring patience and careful slowness, and neither good-will nor patience had Eyebright to bring to the task.  Her fingers twitched, she “pshawed,” and “oh deared,” ran the needle in and out and in irregularly, jerked the thread, and finally gave a fretful pull when she came to the end of the first needleful, which tore a fresh hole in the stuff and puckered all she had darned, so that it was not fit to be seen.  Wealthy looked in just then, and was scandalized at the condition of the work.

“You can just pick it out from the beginning,” she said.  “It’s a burning shame that a great girl like you shouldn’t know how to do better.  But it’s temper ­that’s what it is.  Nothing in the world but temper, Eyebright.  You’ve been as cross as two sticks all day, Massy knows for what, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” whereon she gave Eyebright a little shake.

The shake was like a match applied to gunpowder.  Eyebright flamed into open revolt.

“Wealthy Ann Judson!” she cried, angrily.  “Let me alone.  It’s all your fault if I am cross, you treat me so.  I won’t pick it out.  I won’t darn it at all.  And I shall just tell my father that you shook me; see if I don’t.”

Wealthy’s reply was a sound box on the ear.  Eyebright’s naughtiness certainly deserved punishment, but it was hardly wise or right of Wealthy to administer it, or to do it thus.  She was far too angry to think of that, however.

“That’s what you want,” said Wealthy, “and you’d be a better girl if you got it oftener.”  Then she marched out of the room, leaving Eyebright in a fury.

“I won’t bear it!  I won’t bear it!” she exclaimed, bursting into tears.  “Everybody is cruel, cruel!  I’ll run away!  I’ll not stay in this house another minute ­not another minute,” and, catching up her sun-bonnet, she darted through the hall and was out of the gate and down the street in a flash.  Wealthy was in the kitchen, her father was out, no one saw her go.  Rosy and Tom Bury, who were swinging on their gate, called to her as she passed, but their gay voices jarred on her ear, and she paid no attention to the call.

Tunxet village was built upon a sloping hill whose top was crowned with woods.  To reach these woods, Eyebright had only to climb two stone walls and cross a field and a pasture, and as they seemed just then the most desirable refuge possible, she made haste to do so.  She had always had a peculiar feeling for woods, a feeling made up of terror and attraction.  They were associated in her mind with fairies and with robbers, with lost children, redbreasts, Robin Hood and his merry men; and she was by turns eager and shy at the idea of exploring their depths, according to which of these images happened to be uppermost in her ideas.  To-day she thought neither of Robin Hood nor the fairies.  The wood was only a place where she could hide away and cry and be unseen, and she plunged in without a thought of fear.

In and in she went, over stones and beds of moss, and regiments of tall brakes, which bowed and rose as she forced her way past their stems, and saluted her with wafts of woodsy fragrance, half bitter, half sweet, but altogether pleasant.  There was something soothing in the shade and cool quiet of the place.  It fell like dew on her hot mood, and presently her anger changed to grief, she knew not why.  Her eyes filled with tears.  She sat down on a stone all brown with soft mosses, and began to cry, softly at first, then loudly and more loud, not taking any pains to cry quietly, but with hard sobs and great gulps which echoed back in an odd way from the wood.  It seemed a relief at first to make as much noise as she liked with her crying, and to know that there was no one to hear or be annoyed.  It was pleasant, too, to be able to talk out loud as well as to cry.

“They are so unkind to me,” she wailed, “so very unkind.  Wealthy never slapped me before.  She has no right to slap me.  I’ll never kiss Wealthy again, ­never.  O-h, she was so unkind” ­

“O-h!” echoed back the wood in a hollow tone.  Eyebright jumped.

“It’s like a voice,” she thought.  “I’ll go somewhere else.  It isn’t nice just here.  I don’t like it.”

So she went back a little way to the edge of the forest, where the trees were less thick, and between their stems she could see the village below.  Here she felt safer than she had been when in the thick wood.  She threw herself down in a comfortable hollow at the foot of an oak, and, half sitting, half lying, began to think over her wrongs.

“I guess if I was dead they’d be sorry,” she reflected.  “They’d hunt and hunt for me, and not know where I was.  And at last they’d come up here, and find me dead, with a tear on my cheek, and then they’d know how badly they had made me feel, and their hearts would nearly break.  I don’t believe father would ever smile again.  He’d be like the king in the ’Second Reader’: ­

    ’But waves went o’er his son’s bright hair,
     He never smiled again.’

Only, I’m a daughter, and it would be leaves and not waves!  Mother, she’d cry and cry, and as for that old Wealthy” ­but Eyebright felt it difficult to imagine what Wealthy would do under these circumstances.  Her thoughts drifted another way.

“I might go into a convent instead.  That would be better, I guess.  I’d be a novice first, with a white veil and a cross and a rosary, and I’d look so sweet and holy that all the other children, ­no, there wouldn’t be any other children, ­never mind! ­I’d be lovely, anyhow.  But I’d be a Protestant always!  I wouldn’t want to be a Catholic and have to kiss the Pope’s old toe all the time!  Then by and by I should take that awful black veil.  Then I could never come out any more ­not ever!  And I should kneel in the chapel all the time as motionless as a marble figure.  That would be beautiful.”  Eyebright had never been able to sit still for half an hour together in her life, but that made no difference in her enjoyment of this idea.  “The abbess will be beautiful, too, but stern and unrelenting, and she’ll say ‘Daughters’ when she speaks to us nuns, and we shall say ‘Holy Mother’ when we speak to her.  It’ll be real nice.  We shan’t have to do any darning, but just embroidery in our cells and wax flowers.  Wealthy’ll want to come in and see me, I know, but I shall just tell the porter that I don’t want her, not ever.  ‘She’s a heretic,’ I shall say to the porter, and he’ll lock the door the minute he sees her coming.  Then she’ll be mad!  The Abbess and Mere Genefride” ­Eyebright had just read for the fourth time Mrs. Sherwood’s exciting novel called “The Nun,” so her imaginary convent was modelled exactly after the one there described ­“the abbess and Mere Genefride will always be spying about and listening in the passage to hear what we say, when we sit in our cells embroidering and telling secrets, but me and my Pauline ­no, I won’t call her Pauline ­Rosalba ­sister Rosalba ­that shall be her name ­we’ll speak so low that she can’t hear a word.  Then we shall suspect that something strange is taking place down in the cellar, ­I mean the dungeons, ­and we’ll steal down and listen when the abbess and the bishop and all of them are trying the sister, who has a bible tied on her leg!” Here Eyebright gave an enormous yawn.  “And ­if ­the ­mob ­does come ­Wealthy ­will be sure to ­sure to ­”

But of what we shall never know, for at this precise moment Eyebright fell asleep.

She must have slept a long time, for when she waked the sun had changed his place in the sky, and was shining on the western side of the village houses.  Had some good angel passed by, lifted the “black dog” from her shoulder, and swept from her mind all its foolish and angry thoughts, while she dreamed there under the trees?  For behold! matters and things now looked differently to her, and, instead of blaming other people and thinking hard things of them, she began to blame herself.

“How naughty I was,” she thought, “to be so cross with poor mamma, just because she wanted another cup of tea!  Oh dear, and I made her cry!  I know it was me ­just because I looked so cross.  How horrid I always am!  And I was cross to papa, too, and put my lip out at him.  How could I do so?  What made me?  Wealthy hadn’t any business to slap me, though ­

“But then I was pretty ugly to Wealthy,” she went on, her conscience telling her the truth at last, as consciences will, if allowed.  “I just tried to provoke her ­and I called her Wealthy Ann Judson!  That always makes her mad.  She never slapped me before not since I was a little mite of a girl.  Oh, dear!  And only yesterday she washed all Genevieve’s dolly things ­her blue muslin, and her overskirt, and all ­and she said she didn’t mind trouble when it was for my doll.  She’s very good to me sometimes.  Almost always she’s good.  Oh, I oughtn’t to have spoken so to Wealthy ­I oughtn’t ­I oughtn’t!” And Eyebright began to cry afresh; not angry tears this time, but bright, healthful drops of repentance, which cleansed and refreshed her soul.

“I’ll go right home now and tell her I am sorry,” she said, impetuously; and, jumping from her seat, she ran straight down the hill and across the field, eager to make her confession and to be forgiven.  Eyebright’s fits of temper, big and little, usually ended in this way.  She had none of that dislike of asking pardon with which some persons are afflicted.  To her it was a relief ­a thing to be met and gone through with for the sake of the cheer, the blue-sky-in-the-heart, which lay on the other side of it, and the peace which was sure to follow, when once the “forgive me” was spoken.

In at the kitchen door she dashed.  Wealthy, who was ironing, with a worried frown on her brow, started and exclaimed at the sight of Eyebright, and sat suddenly down on a chair.  Before she could speak, Eyebright’s arms were round her neck.

“I was real horrid and wicked this morning,” she cried.  “Please forgive me, Wealthy.  I won’t be so naughty again ­not ever.  Oh, don’t, don’t!” for, to her dismay, Wealthy, the grim, broke down and began to cry.  This was really dreadful.  Eyebright stared a moment; then her own eyes filled, and she cried, too.

“What a fool I be!” said Wealthy, dashing the drops from her eyes.  “There, Eyebright, there!  Hush, dear; we won’t say any more about it.”  And she kissed Eyebright, for perhaps the tenth time in her life.  Kisses were rare things, indeed, with Wealthy.

“Where have you been?” she asked presently.  “It’s four o’clock and after.  Did you know that?  Have you had any dinner?”

“No, but I don’t want any, Wealthy.  I’ve been in the woods on top of the hill.  I ran away and sat there, and I guess I fell asleep,” said Eyebright, hanging her head.

“Well, your pa didn’t come home to dinner, for a wonder; I reckon he was kept to the mill; so we hadn’t much cooked.  I took your ma’s up to her; but I never let on that I didn’t know where you was, for fear of worrying her.  She has worried a good lot any way.  Here, let me brush your hair a little, and then you’d better run upstairs and make her mind easy.  I’ll have something for you to eat when you come down.”

Eyebright’s heart smote her afresh when she saw her mother’s pale, anxious face.

“You’ve been out so long,” she said.  “I asked Wealthy, and she said she guessed you were playing somewhere, and didn’t know how the time went.  I was afraid you felt sick, and she was keeping it from me.  It is so bad to have things kept from me; nothing annoys me so much.  And you didn’t look well at breakfast.  Are you sick, Eyebright?”

“No, mamma, not a bit.  But I have been naughty ­very naughty indeed, mamma; and I ran away.”

Then she climbed up on the bed beside her mother, and told the story of the morning, keeping nothing back ­all her hard feelings and anger at everybody, and her thoughts about dying, and about becoming a nun.  Her mother held her hand very tight indeed when she reached this last part of the confession.  The idea of the wood, also, was terrible to the poor lady.  She declared that she shouldn’t sleep a wink all night for thinking about it.

“It wasn’t a dangerous wood at all,” explained Eyebright.  “There wasn’t any thing there that could hurt me.  Really there wasn’t, mamma.  Nothing but trees, and stones, and ferns, and old tumbled-down trunks covered with tiny-weeny mosses, ­all green and brown and red, and some perfectly white, ­so pretty.  I wish I had brought you some, mamma.”

“Woods are never safe,” declared Mrs. Bright, “what with snakes, and tramps, and wildcats, and getting lost, and other dreadful things, I hardly take up a paper without seeing something or other bad in it which has happened in a wood.  You must never go there alone again, Eyebright.  Promise me that you won’t.”

Eyebright promised.  She petted and comforted her mother, kissing her over and over again, as if to make up for the anxiety she had caused her, and for the cross words and looks of the morning.  The sad thing is, that no one ever does make up.  All the sweet words and kind acts of a lifetime cannot undo the fact that once ­one bad day far away behind us ­we were unkind and gave pain to some one whom we love.  Even their forgiveness cannot undo it.  How I wish we could remember this always before we say the words which we afterward are so sorry for, and thus save our memories from the burden of a sad load of regret and repentance!

When Eyebright went downstairs, she found a white napkin, her favorite mug filled with milk, a plateful of bread and butter and cold lamb, and a large pickled peach, awaiting her on the kitchen table.  Wealthy hovered about as she took her seat, and seemed to have a disposition to pat Eyebright’s shoulder a good deal, and to stroke her hair.  Wealthy, too, had undergone the repentance which follows wrath.  Her morning, I imagine, had been even more unpleasant than Eyebright’s, for she had spent it over a hot ironing table, and had not had the refreshment of running away into the woods.

“It’s so queer,” said Eyebright, with her mouth full of bread and butter.  “I didn’t know I was hungry a bit, but I am as hungry as can be.  Every thing tastes so good, Wealthy.”

“That’s right,” replied Wealthy, who was a little upset, and tearful still.  “A good appetite’s a good thing, ­next best to a good conscience, I think.”

Eyebright’s spirits were mounting as rapidly as quicksilver.  Bessie Mather appeared at the gate as she finished her last mouthful, and, giving Wealthy a great hug, Eyebright ran out to meet her, with a lightness and gayety of heart which surprised even herself.  The blue sky seemed bluer than ever before, the grass greener, the sunshine was like yellow gold.  Every little thing that happened made her laugh.  It was as though a black cloud had been rolled away from between her and the light.

“I wonder what makes me so particularly happy to-night,” she thought, as she sat on the steps waiting for papa, after Bessie was gone.  “It’s queer that I should, when I’ve been so naughty ­and all.”

But it was not queer, though Eyebright felt it so.  The world never looks so fair and bright as to eyes newly washed by tears of sorrow for faults forgiven; and hearts which are emptied of unkind feelings grow light at once, as if happiness were the rule of the world and not the exception.