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Page 23
Without a particle of aggressiveness in his disposition, he had never
undertaken actively the work of reform, yet his example of uprightness
and integrity had made an impression upon the community. The people
treated him with unvarying respect and confidence, partly from a sense
of his real superiority, and partly, perhaps, from the very lack of
self-assertion on his side. Consequently without having made the least
effort to do so, he exercised an autocratic power among them.
Mrs. Dubois visited the women of the place frequently, particularly
when the men were absent in their lumbering, or fishing operations,
conversing with them freely, bearing patiently their superstitions and
ignorance, aiding them liberally in temporal things, and sometimes
mingling kindly words of counsel with her gifts.
Ad�le's intercourse with the settlers was in an altogether different
style. Her manner from earliest childhood, when she first began to
run about from one cottage to another, had been free, frank, and
imperious. Whether it was, that having sniffed from babyhood the fresh
forest air of the new world, its breath had inspired her with a
careless independence not shared by her parents, or, whether the
haughty blood that had flowed far back in the veins of ancestors,
after coursing quietly along the generations, had in her become
stimulated into new activity, certain it is, she had always the
bearing of one having authority and the art of governing seemed
natural to her. It was strange, therefore, that she should have been
such a universal favorite in the neighborhood. But so it was. Those
who habitually set public law at defiance, came readily under the
control of her youthful sway.
Possessing a full share of the irrepressible activity of childhood,
she enacted the part of lady of the Manor, assuming prerogatives that
even her mother did not think of exercising.
When about eleven summers old, she opened one afternoon the door of an
Irish cabin and received at once a cordial, noisy welcome from its
inmates. She did not however, make an immediate response, for she had
begun taking a minute survey of the not over-nice premises. At length
she deigned to speak.
"Bridget Malone, are you not ashamed to have such a disorderly house
as this? Why don't you sweep the floor and put things in place?"
"Och! hinny, and how can I swape the floor without a brum?" said
Bridget, looking up in some dismay.
"Didn't my father order James to give you a broom whenever you want
one? Here Pat", said she, to a ragged urchin about her own age, who
was tumbling about over the floor with a little dirty-faced baby,
"here, take this jack-knife and go down to the river by Mrs.
Campbell's new house and cut some hemlock boughs. Be quick, and bring
them back as fast as you can". Pat started at once.
Ad�le then deliberately took off her bonnet and shawl, rolled them up
into as small a package as she could make, and placed them on the
nearest approximation to a clean spot that could be found. Then she
stooped down, took the baby from the floor and handed him to his
mother.
Here, Bridget, take Johnny, wash his face and put him on a clean
dress. I know he has another dress and it ought to be clean".
"Yes. He's got one you gave him, Miss Ady, but it aint clane at all.
Shure it's time to wash I'm wanting, it is".
"Now, don't tell me, Bridget, that you have not time to wash your
children's clothes and keep them decent. You need not spend so many
hours smoking your pipe over the ashes".
"You wouldn't deprive a poor cratur of all the comfort she has in the
world, would ye, hinny?"
"You ought to take comfort in keeping your house and children clean,
Bridget".
In the meanwhile, Bridget had washed Johnny's face, and there being no
clean dress ready for the little fellow, Ad�le said, "Come, Bridget,
put on a kettle of water, pick up your clothes, and do your washing".
"Shure, and I will, if ye say so, Miss Ady".
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