A Yankee Girl at Shiloh

								

been a hopin’ and a prayin’ there’d be some chance for Mollie to
get book-larnin’, but no way seemed to open, and now your folks
come along an’ want to teach her. Of course she can come, an’ mighty
thankful fer the chanst,” and Mrs. Bragg wiped her faded eyes with
the corner of her worn apron, and managed to smile at Mollie, who
was jumping up and down as if too happy to keep still. Mr. Bragg had
started off to look after the traps he set along the river banks for
muskrats, whose skins he sold to a trader in Corinth, so there was no
argument about the “foolishness of book-larnin’,” for Mr. Bragg often
proudly announced that he “never had no schoolin’, an’ never was any
the wus’ fer it,” without any idea that his poverty and laziness had
been caused by his ignorance.
“School begins to-morrow,” Berry added, “at ten o’clock.”
“What will we learn to-morrow?” Mollie asked eagerly, her pale blue
eyes shining with delight.
Berry shook her head. “I don’t know. I expect it will be a surprise. I
don’t believe it will be like a real school,” she replied.
Mollie’s smile vanished. To go to a “real school” seemed the finest
thing in the world to the little mountain girl, who had not even
known the letters of the alphabet until Berry had taught them to
her, and who could now, at ten years of age, only read words of one
syllable, and was just beginning to learn the meaning of figures.
Berry was quick to notice the change in Mollie’s expression, and
added, “I mean we won’t sit behind little desks, and keep as quiet as
mice, the way girls do in schools.”
“P’raps we will,” Mollie rejoined hopefully; “p’raps I’ll learn
writin’.”
“Of course you will,” Berry declared, and Mollie’s smile promptly
reappeared.
“May I spin this morning?” Berry asked, going toward the big
spinning-wheel that stood in one corner of the kitchen, on which Mrs.
Bragg spun the yarn for the stockings worn by the family, and often
permitted Berry to spin the soft fleecy rolls of wool into yarn. Berry
always considered this permission a great privilege, and her father
had promised to make a spinning-wheel for her.
Usually Mrs. Bragg was quite ready to let Berry try her hand at the
wheel, but this morning she shook her head dolefully.
“The wheel’s give out,” she declared. “Steve promised to take a look
at it, but land knows when he’ll get ’round to it.”
Berry approached the big wheel and looked at it anxiously. “What’s the
matter with it?” she asked.
“’Twon’t move!” and to prove this Mrs. Bragg touched the rim of the
wheel, that usually responded to the lightest touch, but now kept firm
and steady.
Berry had watched her father in his work with tools, had seen him
oil hinges that would not move, or loosen nuts that held some wheel
or bar too tightly, and she had been taught to do many things that