"Only what, child?" asked the fond old woman.
"But you won't be angry if I say it?" said the child, a conscious blush suffusing her lovely features.
"Only not tell any more fortunes, aunty; then we should be so happy."
"Not tell any more fortunes! What ails the child? Why, that's the way half our living comes; and an easy way to earn it, too; much easier than to sit and spin on the little linen wheel from morning till night."
"Easier, but not so honorable, is it, aunty?"
"Honorable! Yes, child; what put it into your pretty, curly head that it was not honorable to read future events and take fees for it?"
"Why, sometimes the girls and boys at school laugh and scorn at me, and call me the old witch's brat, or the young Scraggiewood seeress, or some such name," said the child, in a tone of sorrowful regret; "and I've often wished you would not tell fortunes any more. Learn me how to use the small wheel, aunty, and all the hours when I'm out of school, I'll spin fast as I can. I know we could get a very good living without your telling fortunes; don't you think so, aunty?"
"Why, child, I never thought a word about it," said the old woman, gazing on the beautiful face upturned to hers, and grown so earnest in its pleading.
"But you will think to-day, while I'm at school, won't you, aunty? I see George coming for me, now;" and, moving her chair from the table, she sprang for her satchel and sun-bonnet as her little play-fellow came over the stile, calling her name.
"You must have on your shoes this morning, hinny," said her aunt; "there was a heavy dew last night, and the path is wet."
"Yes," said George, "have them on, Annie, for I want you to go with me by the brook to get some pretty eglantines I saw last night, nearly bloomed; they are all out this morning, I know."
Annie was soon equipped, and, with a hearty blessing from Aunt Patty, they took their way hand in hand toward the village school.
"On sped the seasons, and the forest child Was rounded to the symmetry of youth; While o'er her features stole, serenely wild, The trembling sanctity of woman's truth, Her modesty and simpleness and grace; Yet those who deeper scan the human face, Amid the trial hour of fear or ruth, Might clearly read upon its Heaven-writ scroll, That high and firm resolve that nerved the Roman soul."