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Fanny McDermot
by
“If she looked like other children,” thought Sara Hyat, as her eye rested on Fanny, “she might have been thrown down and had both her legs broken, and that young spark would never have troubled himself about her. If it had but pleased God to give her her grandfather’s bottled nose, or her father’s little gray twinkling eyes; or if she had favoured any of the Floods, or looked like any of the Rankins—except her poor mother. But what a picture of a face to throw a poor girl with, alone, among the wolves and foxes of this wicked city. Oh, that men were men, and not beasts of prey!
“Fanny—Fanny—child”—the old woman’s voice trembled, but there was an earnestness in it that impressed each word as she uttered it, “mark my words, and one of these days, when I am dead, and gone, you will remember them; God gives beauty, Fanny, for a trial to some, and a temptation to others. That’s all the use I could ever see in it; to be sure, its a pretty thing to look upon, but its just like a rose; by the time it is blowed out it begins to fade. Now do leave that bird-cage one minute and listen to me. This is what I want you to remember,” proceeded the old woman, with more earnestness and stronger emphasis, “when men follow you, and flatter you, turn a deaf ear, Fanny; pay no kind of attention to them, and if they persevere, fly away from them as you would from rats.”
“Aunt Sara! I don’t know what you mean?”
“The time will come when I can make my meaning plainer; for the present it is enough for you to know, that you must not listen to fine dressde [dressed] men; that you must not take presents from them; that you must go straight to school and come straight home from it, and say nothing to nobody. If ever I get the money that good-for-nothing Martin owes me for work done four years ago, I’ll buy you a bird, Fanny; but if you can get a chance, you must send this back where it came from.”
“Oh, Aunt Sara! must I?”
“Yes. What is in that paper? Untie it.”
Fanny untied it. It enveloped a quantity of bird seed, and a dainty basket filled with French bonbons. Fanny involuntarily smiled, and then looked towards her aunt, as if to ask her if she might smile. The cloud on the old lady’s brow lowered more and more heavily, and Fanny said timidly—
“Must I send these back too, aunt, or may I give them to Pat and Ellen? I won’t eat any myself.”
“You are a good child, Fanny, and docile. Yes, you may go down and hand them in, and don’t stay talking with them; and mind again, if ever an opportunity comes, the bird goes back.”
Fanny could not, for her life, see the harm of keeping the bird; it seemed to her that the gentleman was very kind, but the possibility of disobedience to her aunt, or of contending with her, did not occur to her. She knew, and that was enough to know, that her aunt indulged her whenever she thought indulgence right, and that she strained every nerve for her. Her wishes were not as easily subdued as her will, and each day as she grew more in love with her canary, they became stronger and stronger, that the opportunity might never come to send them away.
But come it did. The following Thursday was Christmas day, a holiday of course to Fanny, but none to Mrs. Hyat, who, having been strictly bred a Presbyterian, held in sectarian disdain even this dearest and most legitimate of holidays.