Ishmael; Or, In the DepthsSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
Ishmael; Or, In the Depths
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
Fiction
She had not far to look; for the one poor room contained all of the
sisters' earthly goods. And they were easily summed up--a bed in one
corner, a loom in another, a spinning-wheel in the third, and a
corner-cupboard in the fourth; a chest of drawers sat against the wall
between the bed and the loom, and a pine table against the opposite wall
between the spinning-wheel and the cupboard; four wooden chairs sat just
wherever they could be crowded. There was no carpet on the floor, no
paper on the walls. There was but one door and one window to the hut,
and they were in front. Opposite them at the back of the room was a wide
fire-place, with a rude mantle shelf above it, adorned with old brass
candlesticks as bright as gold. Poor as this hut was, the most
fastidious fine lady need not have feared to sit down within it, it was
so purely clean.
The sisters were soon ready, and after closing up their wee hut as
cautiously as if it contained the wealth of India, they set forth, in
their blue cotton gowns and white cotton bonnets, to attend the grand
birthday festival of the young heir of Brudenell Hall.
Around them spread out a fine, rolling, well-wooded country; behind them
stood their own little hut upon the top of its bare hill; below them lay
a deep, thickly-wooded valley, beyond which rose another hill, crowned
with an elegant mansion of white free-stone. That was Brudenell Hall.
Thus the hut and the hall perched upon opposite hills, looked each other
in the face across the wooded valley. And both belonged to the same vast
plantation--the largest in the county. The morning was indeed delicious,
the earth everywhere springing with young grass and early flowers; the
forest budding with tender leaves; the freed brooks singing as they ran;
the birds darting about here and there seeking materials to build their
nests; the heavens benignly smiling over all; the sun glorious; the air
intoxicating; mere breath joy; mere life rapture! All nature singing a
Gloria in Excelsis! And now while the sisters saunter leisurely on,
pausing now and then to admire some exquisite bit of scenery, or to
watch some bird, or to look at some flower, taking their own time for
passing through the valley that lay between the hut and the hall, I must
tell you who and what they were.
Hannah and Leonora Worth were orphans, living alone together in the hut
on the hill and supporting themselves by spinning and weaving.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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