Ethelyn's Mistake

There was a sweet odor of clover blossoms in the early morning air, and

the dew stood in great drops upon the summer flowers, and dropped from

the foliage of the elm trees which skirted the village common. There was

a cloud of mist upon the meadows, and the windings of the river could be

distinctly traced by the white fog which curled above it. But the fog

and the mists were rolling away as the warm June sun came over the

eastern hills, and here and there signs of life were visible in the

little New England town of Chicopee, where our story opens. The

mechanics who worked in the large shoe-shop halfway down Cottage Row had

been up an hour or more, while the hissing of the steam which carried

the huge manufactory had been heard since the first robin peeped from

its nest in the alders down by the running brook; but higher up, on

Bellevue Street, where the old inhabitants lived, everything was quiet,

and the loamy road, moist and damp with the dews of the previous night,

was as yet unbroken by the foot of man or rut of passing wheel.

The people who lived there, the Mumfords, and the Beechers, and the

Grangers, and the Thorns, did not strictly belong to the working class.

They held stocks in railroads, and mortgages on farms, and so could

afford to sleep after the shrill whistle from the manufactory had

wakened the echoes of the distant hills and sounded across the waters

of Pordunk Pond. Only one dwelling here showed signs of life, and that

the large square building, shaded in front with elms and ornamented at

the side with a luxuriant queen of the prairie, whose blossoms were

turning their blushing faces to the rising sun. This was the Bigelow

house, the joint property of Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, née Sophia Bigelow, who

lived in Boston, and her sister, Miss Barbara Bigelow, the quaintest and

kindest-hearted woman who ever bore the sobriquet of an old maid, and

was aunt to everybody. She was awake long before the whistle sounded

across the river and along the meadow lands, where some of the workmen

lived, and just as the robin, whose nest for four summers had been under

the eaves where neither boy nor cat could reach it, brought the first

worm to its clamorous young, she pushed the fringed curtain from her

open window, and with her broad frilled cap still on her head, stood for

a moment looking out upon the morning as it crept up the eastern sky.

"She will have a nice day for her wedding. May her future life be as

fair," Aunt Barbara whispered softly, then kneeling before the window

with her head bowed upon the sill, she prayed earnestly for God's

blessing on the bridal to take place that night beneath her roof, and

upon the young girl who had been both a care and a comfort since the

Christmas morning eighteen years before, when her half-sister Julia had

come home to die, bringing with her the little Ethelyn, then but two

years old.