A Little Girl in Old Boston by Amanda Minnie Douglas (free novels txt) 📖

some rather rough fun in a serenade, thinking the bridal couple would stay in town.

There were some amusements, jesting and laughter, some card-playing and health-drinking among the elders. The guests congratulated Madam Royall nearly as much as they had the bride. Then one after another came and bade her good-night, and took away their parcel of wedding cake to dream on.

"Oh," cried Doris on the way home,--the night was so pleasant they were walking,--"oh, wasn't it splendid! I wish Betty could have been there. Cary, how old must you be before you can get married?"

"Well--I should have to look up a girl."

"Oh, take Miss Alice. She likes you ever so much--I heard her say so. But you haven't any house like Mr. Winslow. Uncle Win, couldn't he bring her home to live with us?"

Cary's cheeks were in a red flame. Uncle Win laughed.

"My dear," he began, "a young man must have some business or some money to take care of his wife. She wouldn't like to be dependent on his relatives. Cary is going to study law, which will take some years, then he must get established, and so we will have to wait a long while. He is too young. Mr. Winslow is thirty; Cary isn't twenty yet."

"Oh, dear! Well, perhaps Betty will get married. The girl doesn't have to be so old?"

"No," said Uncle Win.

Betty came over the next morning to spend the day and help Miss Recompense to distill. She wanted to hear the first account from Doris and Uncle Win, to take off the edge of Jane's triumphant news.

They made rose water and a concoction from the spice pinks. Then they preserved cherries. Uncle Win took them driving toward night and said some day they would go over to Dorchester. He had several friends there.

The next excitement for Doris was the college commencement. Mr. Adams was disappointed that his son should not stand at the head of almost everything. He had taken one prize and made some excellent examinations, but there were many ranking as high and some higher.

There were no ball games, no college regattas to share honors then. Not that these things were tabooed. There were some splendid rowing matches and games, but then young men had a desire to stand high intellectually.

A long while before Judge Sewall had expressed his disapproval of the excesses at dinners, the wine-drinking and conviviality, and had set Friday for commencement so that there would be less time for frolicking. The war, with its long train of economies, and the greater seriousness of life in general, had tempered all things, but there was gayety enough now, with dinners given to the prize winners and a very general jollification.

Doris went with Uncle Winthrop. Commencement was one of the great occasions of the year. All the orations were in Latin, and the young men might have been haranguing a Roman army, so vigorous were they. Many of the graduates were very young; boys really studied at that time.

The remainder of the day and the one following were given over to festivities. Booths were everywhere on the ground; colors flying, flowers wreathed in every fashion, and so much merriment that they quite needed Judge Sewall back again to restrain the excesses.

Mr. Adams and Doris went to dine at the Cragie House, and Doris would have felt quite lost among judges and professors but for Miss Cragie, who took her in charge. When they went home in the early evening the shouts and songs and boisterousness seemed like a perfect orgy.

Someone has said, with a kind of dry wit, "Wherever an Englishman goes courts and litigation are sure to prevail." Certainly our New England forefathers, who set out with the highest aims, soon found it necessary to establish law courts. In the early days every man pleaded his own cause, and was especially versed in the "quirks of the law." Jeremy Gridley, a graduate of Harvard, interested himself in forming a law club in the early part of the previous century to pursue the study enough "to keep out of the briars." And to Justice Dana is ascribed the credit of administering to Mr. Secretary Oliver, standing under the Liberty Tree in a great assemblage of angry townspeople, an oath that he would take no measures to enforce the odius Stamp Act of the British Parliament or distribute it among the people.

And now the bar had a rank of its own, and Winthrop Adams had a strong desire to see his son one of the shining lights in the profession. Cary had a fine voice and was a good speaker. More than once he had distinguished himself in an argument at some of the debates. To be admitted to the office of Governor Gore was considered a high honor then, and this Mr. Adams gained for his son. Cary had another vague dream, but parental authority in well-bred families was not to be disputed at that period, and Cary acquiesced in his father's decision, since he knew his own must bring about much discussion and probably a refusal.

Mrs. King came to visit her mother this summer. She left all her children at home, as she wanted to visit round, and was afraid they might be an annoyance to Aunt Priscilla. Little Ruth had gone home very much improved, her eyes quite restored.

Uncle Winthrop enjoyed Mrs. King's society very much. She was intelligent and had cultivated her natural abilities, she also had a certain society suavity that made her an agreeable companion. Doris thought her a good deal like Betty, she was so pleasant and ready for all kinds of enjoyment. Aunt Priscilla considered her very frivolous, and there was so much going and coming that she wondered Elizabeth did not get crazy over it.

They were to remove to New York in the fall, Mr. King having perfected his business arrangements. So Betty would have her winter in the gay city after all.

There were many delightful excursions with pleasure parties up and down the bay. The Embargo had been repealed, and the sails of merchant ships were again whitening the harbor, and business people breathed more freely.

There were Castle Island, with its fortifications and its waving flag, and queer old dreary-looking Noddle's Island, also little towns and settlements where one could spend a day delightfully. Every place, it seemed to Doris, had some queer, interesting story, and she possessed an insatiable appetite for them. There was the great beautiful sweep of Boston Bay, with its inlets running around the towns and its green islands everywhere--places that had been famous and had suffered in the war, and were soon to suffer again.

Mrs. King had a friend at Hingham, and one day they went there in a sort of family party. Uncle Winthrop obtained a carriage and drove them around. It was still famous for its wooden-ware factories, and Uncle Win said in the time of Governor Andros, when money was scarce among the early settlers, Hingham had paid its taxes in milk pails, but they decided the taxes could not have been very high, or the fame of the milk pails must have been very great.

Mrs. Gerry said in the early season forget-me-nots grew wild all about, and the ground was blue with them.

"Oh, Uncle Win, let us come and see them next year," cried Doris.

Then they hunted up the old church that had been nearly rent asunder by the bringing in of a bass viol to assist the singers. Party spirit had run very high. The musical people had quoted the harps and sacbuts of King David's time, the trumpets and cymbals. At last the big bass viol won the victory and was there. And the hymn was:


"Oh, may my heart in tune be found,
Like David's harp of solemn sound."


But the old minister was not to be outdone. The hymn was lined off in this fashion:


"Oh, may my heart go diddle, diddle,
Like Uncle David's sacred fiddle."


There were still a great many people opposed to instrumental music and who could see no reverence in the organ's solemn sound.

Uncle Winthrop smiled over the story, and Betty said it would do to tell to Aunt Priscilla.

Betty begged that they might take Doris to Salem with them. Doris thought she should like to see the smart little Elizabeth, who was like a woman already, and her old playfellow James, as well as Ruth, who seemed to her hardly beyond babyhood. And there were all the weird old stories--she had read some of them in Cotton Mather's "Magnalia," and begged others from Miss Recompense, who did not quite know whether she believed them or not, but she said emphatically that people had been mistaken and there was no such thing as witches.

"A whole week!" said Uncle Winthrop. "Whatever shall I do without a little girl that length of time?"

"But you have Cary now," she returned archly.

Cary was a good deal occupied with young friends and college associates. Now and then he went over to Charlestown and stayed all night with one of his chums.

"I suppose I ought to learn how it will be without you when you want to go away in real earnest."

"I am never going away."

"Suppose Mrs. King should invite you to New York? She has some little girls."

"You might like to go," she returned with a touch of hesitation.

"To see the little girls?" smilingly.

"To see a great city. Do you suppose they are very queer--and Dutch?"

He laughed at that.

"But the Dutch people went there and settled, just as the Puritans came here. And I think I like the Dutch because they have such a merry time at Christmas. We read about them in history at school."

"And then the English came, you know. I think now there is not much that would suggest Holland. I have been there."

Then Doris was eager to know what it was like, and Uncle Winthrop was interested in telling her. They forgot all about Salem--at least, Doris did until she was going to bed.

"If you _do_ go you must be very careful a witch does not catch you, for I couldn't spare my little girl altogether."

"Uncle Winthrop, I am going to stay with you always. When Miss Recompense gets real old and cannot look after things I shall be your housekeeper."

"When Miss Recompense reaches old age I am afraid I shall be quaking for very fear."

"But it takes a long while for people to get very old," she returned decisively.

Betty came over the next day to tell her they would start on Thursday morning, and were going in a sloop to Marblehead with a friend of her father's, Captain Morton.

It was almost like going to sea, Doris thought. They had to thread their way through the islands and round Winthrop Head. There was Grover's Cliff, and then they went out past Nahant into the broad, beautiful bay, where you could see the ocean. It seemed ages ago since she had crossed it. They kept quite in to the green shores and could see Lynn and Swampscott, then they rounded one more point and came to Marblehead, where Captain Morton stopped to unload his cargo, while they went on to Salem.

At the old dock they were met by a big boy and a country wagon. This was Foster Manning, the eldest grandson of the