The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1880-06-25
DOLLY AND DAN.

"Dorothy-Dorothy Waldo' screamed
Miss Lorinda Cross ('' cross by name
and cross by nature" the children-yes.
and many of the grown-ups-of the
nelghborhood declare herr, as she
pounced upon the huge loaf of bread
which she had taken from the oven and
put into the big stone crock only half an
hour ago, just before she turned her
straight-up-and-down back on the
kitchen, to stalk to the garnet after ''that
idle hussy, Molly"-the maid-of-all-
wOrk-"who had been twice as long as
she ought to have been making the beds
there. +" T
I said the huge loaf. I should have
said half the huge loaf, for only that
proportion of the newly baked bread re-
manned. ~ | 1N
Dorothy Wal-dol" again screamed
Miss Gross, in an ascending scale, with
an ominous tremolo on the last note
eyes, aunt" replied a sweet, fresh
young voice; and a pretty young girl
came in from the garden, with basket
OF cherry-red currants in her hand
A tiny thing she was, with round dim
pied, rosy face, innocent child-like blue
gray eyes, and fair hair, some short
tresses of which had escaped from the
braid into which they had been bound
and were making delightful use of their
freedom by curling in the most charming
manner about the low frank brow and
little pink-tipped ears.
About "sweet sixteen" stranger
would have pronounced her; but Dolly.
as her youthful companions, much to the
disgust Of her aunt Lorinda, called her.
was older than that by year and a
half.
An orphan at the age of twelve, she
had been left to the care of the only re-
lative she knew, her mothers elder sister
"a woman hard of speech and manners.
and anything but soft in heart. This
maiden lady soured irrevocably on her
twenty-fourth birthday, which should
have also been her wedding day; but at
the very moment she was fastening the
orange blossoms in her hair, had come
the news that her betrothed had eloped
with the girl-friend she had chosen for
her bridesmaid. Lorinda tore the bridal
wreath into fragments, and scattered it
TO the winds; never mentioned the false
pair from that hour, banished forever all
the Womanly grace and tenderness she
-had ever possessed (truth to. tell, she had
never possessed much) and became the
hardest worker Of her sex that ever
worked upon farm. In a mans boots
coat, and hat, early and late, hot or cold.
wet or dry, with set mouth slowerin o
brow, and silent lips, she toiled side by
1de with her sturdy old father, until the
day he was struck down by the pitiless
sun, and died few hours afforded
just IN time to be saved the pang Of hear
ing that his youngest and favorite daugh-
ter was lying at the point Of death,
widowed and friendless, in far-away
city. Lorinda buried her father-if she
wept for him, none saw her promoted a
man who had been long In his employ
ment to the position she used herself to
occupy, and started for her sisters bed
side. When she returned to Fernville
again, she brought dear little fair haired,
soft-eyed Dorothy with her, and some
OF her neighbors fancied that since that
time she had been shade less stern
but if she had been, it was so slight a
shade that it was almost impossible to
perceive it. True, she did less out-of-
door work, and devoted part of the time
thus saved to teaching her niece to sew
and cook and churn, and other like &C
cOmplishments but never were the les
sons accompanied by an approving smile
or kindly word, much less loving kiss.
Even to the gentle, winning child, Lorinda
Gross remained a cold stern woman But
Dorothy was so sunny in disposition that
the stern ways and dark face of her aunt
could not cloud her young life. And
though shut out from that infeMble
woman's heart, she found the doors of
all other hearts wide open to her. The
dogs, the cats, the hens, the chickens,
the horses, the COWS, the calves, the
very geese, regarded her with alteration
The farm laborers blessed her pretty
face whenever she came among them !;
and as for Molly-poor hard-worked
Molly - she would have kissed the
ground the little feet, trod upon. ee.
What wonder, then, that Dan Howell,
the young surveyor, who lived half a
mile away, in the old stone cottage, and
whom she had known from the very first
day Of her arrival in Fernville (when he,
then a tall, bright-faced boy of fifteen,
passing her aunt's gate, and seeing the
sad-looking little girl, hlsher black dress,
standing by it, silently offered her the
prethest white rabbit she had ever seen