Tempest and Sunshine

Fanny was building castles--in all of which Mr. Wilmot and Julia were the

hero and heroine. She gazed admiringly at her sister, whose face grew

handsomer each moment as she became more animated, and she thought, "What

a nice-looking couple Julia and Mr. Wilmot would make! And they would be

so happy, too--that is if sister didn't get angry, and I am sure she

wouldn't with Mr. Wilmot. Then they would have a nicer house than this old

shell, and perhaps they would let me live with them!"

Here her reverie was interrupted by Mr. Wilmot, who asked her if she ever

studied Latin. Fanny hesitated; she did not wish to confess that she had

once studied it six months, but at the end of that time she was so

heartily tired of its "long-tailed verbs," as she called them, that she

had thrown her grammar out of the window and afterward given it to Aunt

Judy to start the oven with!

This story was told, however, by Julia, with many embellishments, for she

delighted in making Fanny appear ridiculous. She was going on swimmingly

when she received a drawback from her mother, who said: "Julia, what do you want to talk so for? You know that while Fanny studied

Latin, Mr. Miller said she learned her lessons more readily than you did

and recited them better, and he said, too, that she was quite as good a

French scholar as you."

Julia curled her lip scornfully and said, "she didn't know what her mother

knew about Fanny's scholarship." Meantime Fanny was blushing deeply and

thinking that she had appeared to great disadvantage in Mr. Wilmot's eyes;

but he very kindly changed the conversation by asking who Mr. Miller was,

and was told that he was a young man from Albany, New York, who taught in

their neighborhood the winter before.

The appearance of some nice red apples just then turned the attention of

the little company in another channel and before they were aware of it the

clock struck ten. Mr. Middleton had not returned and as it was doubtful

whether he came at all that night, Julia went into the kitchen for Luce,

to show Mr. Wilmot to his room. She was gone some time, and when she

returned was accompanied by a bright-looking mulatto girl, who, as soon as

she had conducted Mr. Wilmot into his room, commenced making excuses about

"marster's old house! Things was drefful all round it, but 'twasn't Miss

Julia's fault, for if she could have her way 'twould be fixed up, sartin.

She was a born'd lady, anybody could see; so different from Miss Fanny,

who cared nothing how things looked if she could go into the kitchen and

turn hoe cakes for Aunt Judy, or tend the baby!"