Ethelyn's Mistake

"It's the rat, ma'am, I think," Betty said, opening both blinds and

windows. "I put the pizen for him as you said, and all I could do he

would die in the wall. It ain't as bad as it has been, and I've got some

stuff here to kill it, though I think it smells worse than the rat

himself," and Betty held her nose as she pointed out to her mistress the

saucer of chloride of lime which, at Mrs. Col. Markham's suggestion, she

had put in the sitting room.

Aside from the rat in the wall, things were mostly as Aunt Barbara could

wish them to be. The vinegar had made beautifully. There was fresh

yeast, brewed the day before, in the jug. The milk-pans were bright and

sweet; the cellar door was fastened; the garden was looking its best;

the silver was all up the scuttle-hole, Betty climbing up and risking

her neck every morning to see if it were safe; the stoop and steps were

scrubbed, the roof was swept, and both the cats, Tabby and Jim, were so

fat that they could scarcely walk as they came up to greet their

mistress. Only two mishaps Betty had to relate. Jim had eaten up the

canary bird, and she had broken the kitchen tongs. She had also failed

to accomplish as much sewing as she had hoped to do, and the pile of

work was not greatly diminished.

"There is so many steps to take when a body is alone, and with you gone

I was more particular," she said, by way of apology, as she confessed to

the rat, and the canary bird, and the kitchen tongs, and the small

amount of sewing she had done.

These were all the points wherein she had been remiss, and Aunt Barbara

was content, and even happy, as she laid aside her Stella shawl and

brown Neapolitan, and out in her pleasant dining room sat down to the

hasty meal which Betty improvised, of bread and butter, Dutch cheese,

baked apples, and huckleberry pie, with a cup of delicious tea, such as

Aunt Barbara did not believe the people of New York had ever tasted.

Most certainly those who were fortunate enough to board at first-class

boarding-houses had not; and as she sipped her favorite beverage with

Tabby on her dress and the criminal Tim in her lap, his head

occasionally peering over the table, she felt comforted and rested, and

thankful for her cozy home, albeit it lay like a heavy weight upon her

that her trouble had been for nothing, and no tidings of Ethie had

been obtained.

She wrote to Richard the next day, of her unsuccessful search, and asked

what they should do next.

"We can do nothing but wait and hope," Richard wrote in reply, but Aunt

Barbara added to it, "we can pray;" and so all through the autumn, when

the soft, hazy days which Ethie had loved so well kept the lost one

forever in mind, Aunt Barbara waited and hoped, and prayed and watched

for Ethie's coming home, feeling always a sensation of expectancy when

the Western whistle sounded and the Western train went thundering

through the town; and when the hack came up from the depot and did not

stop at her door, she said to herself, "She would walk up, maybe," and

then waiting again she would watch from her window and look far up the

quiet street, where the leaves of crimson and gold were lying upon the

walk. No Ethie was to be seen. Then as the days grew shorter and the

nights fell earlier upon the Chicopee hills, and the bleak winds blew

across the meadow, and the waters of the river looked blue and dark and

cold in the November light, she said: "She will be here sure by

Christmas. She always liked that day best," and her fingers were busy

with the lamb's wool stockings she was knitting for her darling.