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Matty Smith, the negro girl, as black as soot, and thoroughly African, stood by me as introducer. If I had shut my eyes, her manner of speech might not have been told from that of any cultured white woman's. She was as refined and sensitive a human being as I have ever met. As I walked back to my attic over the plumber shop, it was with head erect and heaving chest.
And her father kept a shop, too! I found that fact out from Matty Bell to-day. What a spiteful, teasing little gnat that same Matty is, trying to sting her best friend.
I spoke in rather an aggrieved tone, feeling somewhat inclined to think my relatives hard-hearted. "Interview Mrs. Petersen, if you choose, my daughter," said papa; "only be prepared for disappointment." "I only want to see Matty provided for, papa," I answered, a little ashamed of my former pettishness.
"Where?" exclaimed Matty with a start that sent the red-hot end into the centre of a mass of papers. "There, just at your feet; don't be so nervous, girl!" cried Mrs Rose. Matty, in her anxiety not to drop the match, at once dropped it into the waste-paper basket, which was instantly alight. A stamp of the foot might have extinguished it, but this did not occur to either of the domestics.
The next morning, directly after breakfast, I announced my intention of going immediately round to see cousin Serena, and asking her to go with me to Mrs. Petersen's, to ascertain if there were any hope that she would take Tony and Matty, now that their father and mother had apparently deserted them. I would provide for Matty, and cousin Serena wished to do the same for the boy.
What a relief it was when the men, weary of their burden and their quick trot, stopped just where Headingley Causeway branches off from Darkness Lane! Miss Pole unloosed me and caught at one of the men "Could not you could not you take Miss Matty round by Headingley Causeway? the pavement in Darkness Lane jolts so, and she is not very strong."
"And he has all my sympathies, and what's more, we must have him to supper, and lobsters and crabs, and anything else he fancies. It isn't for me to be hard-hearted, and not give the poor fellow his opportunities; and no doubt Matty will relent by-and-bye." "Oh, dear me, mother, she has relented now. She's only waiting and dying for him to pop the question."
Oh, Baron! if you heard her fine counter-tenor admonishing Kate and Matty in the morning, you, who understand music, would tremble at the idea of hearing her shriek in the psalmody of Haddo's Hole. 'Lord forgie you, colonel, how ye rin on! But I hope your honours will tak tea before ye gang to the palace, and I maun gang and mask it for you. So saying, Mrs.
In one to her father, slightly theological and controversial in its tone, she had spoken of Herod, Tetrarch of Idumea. Miss Matty read it "Herod Petrarch of Etruria," and was just as well pleased as if she had been right.
Fancy seated herself at the foot of the bed. "If you must know, I've been playin' Meddlesome Matty life-size. . . . These grown-ups are all so helpless the men especially! . . . Feelin' better?" "Heaps. 'Tis foolishness, keepin' me in bed like this, and I wish you'd tell her so. I'm all right 'xcept in my mind." "What's wrong with your mind?" "'Shamed o' myself: that's all but it's bad enough."
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