The Washington critic., 1888-02-18
MISSLYDDYS SURPRISE
By ROSE TERRY COOKE.
A VALENTINE STORY.

else they liked TO do so well as TO plan
bnd perpetrate mischief, for Anne
West 6nd Mary Talcott, at seventeen
and eighteen, were more full of fun
than even girls at that age are usu-
n ally. At their door all the misde-
meanors of the whole Hanaford Fe-
male Seminary were usually laid, be-
cause SO many pranks and so much
misdemeanor really belonged there.
Yet they were what is called "good-
hearted, well-meaning girls" by peo-
pie who forget that
Evil is wrought
BY want OF thought
AS well as by want Of heart"
To-day, however, the curly fair
head and the rough dark one were
only full of innocent mischief; they
were coneocting valentines. Last
year they had received several very
saucy ones themselves, and were
pretty sure of the senders, all of them
seminary girls, 80 this year they were
about to infiict revenge. There were
not more than three young men in
Hanaford who could or would dis
! tinguish themselves in this way; and
one of these was just now ill with
typhoid fever, another very recently
engaged to the primary class teacher
in the seminary, and the third had a
week ago taken his mother to Florida
for the rest of the winter; SO there
was no Irritation to spice these valen-
tines; no man to make miserable or
happy for twenty-four hours; they
Were only writing for pure mischief.
HannfnTd a
town high up in New Hampshire,
from which all the young men who
could had ''gone Vest or TO the
great seaboard cities long ago. One
of those youths had made q vast
amount of money in California, where
he had married. He had one child,
daughter, whom he had sent to New
York to be educated, and at that very
fashionable boarding-school the girl
had lear%ed many things not in the
regular programme; so that before her
schooling was over she had eloped
with clerk in one Of the city shops,
handsome, silly, penniless youth,
who admired her blooming face
much, and her money more. But he
only got the face, not the money; her
father never forgave her, and dying
shortly after, left large sum 10 build
and endow girls school in his native
town, adding the remark that he did
this to provide safe place for the.
education of silly young women, and
especially requesting that all his fam
lily connections should send ,Hheir
daughters there rather thap( to any
town or city.
4 AS the school was >Iiberally en-
&c Oh ste,
principal man of high reputation
and character, and its prices merely
nominal, Hanaford Seminary was al
ways full of pupils, and nobody, up to
this time, had ever eloped from its
precincts, or disgraced it in any way.
Anne West was the daughter of the
only rich man in the town, and Mary
Talcott was her cousin, who boarded
at Mr.. Vests, and, with Anne, was
numbered among the few day scholars
of the seminary. Tonight, as they
finished their rhymes of fun and inn
pertinence, and had also inscribed
them on various decorated sheets of
note-paper, suddenly Anne exclaimed:
"Oh, Molly, let's write one to old
Lyddy Packard / don't believe she
ever had valentine in all her life"
"What frlnp' responded Molly.
"Lets do it, Nan. Let's make q real
sentimental, solemn one; one in dead
earnest, you know. My wouldn't 1
like to be behind the door when she
reads it p
$50 would Il but I'm not going to
wade through all the drifts round her
forlorn little house just to peep in at
her window. wish Valentines Day
came in warm weather-don't youP'
81 wish there never was any cold
weather, If you come to that, "
laughed Molly. And then the two
pretty heads were bent over the table,
and the manufacture of some
Solemn rhymes went on; slowly, il
is true, but perseyeringly. .s.....
Meantime Miss Lyddy Packard went
on her way. unconscious of what
awaited her. She was one Of a class
of women common in New England
country towns-a real old maid. The
days are long past when that term was
one of opprobrium the world has at
last learned that it's best, noblest, and
sweetest women belong to the eleven
thousand virgins, and are quite as
truly saints as st. Ursula's following.
Lydia Packard had nursed bed
ridden mother to her grave, her father
having died in q ft of delirium
tremens, during which he had thrown
his wife down the cellar stairs,
and given thereby fate worse than
death TO the active, CHEEKY woman
the fate of lifelong Imprisonment
in her bleak little bedroom. Lydia
had been cheerful, faithful, and hard
working for twenty-one years under
these adverse circumstances; could
any saint be more? She had never
been Sin love" with any one, for af-
ter her fathers death she had neither
time nor opportunity to give way to
the tender passion; nobody wanted 10
ego with" old man Packard 8 daugh-
ter, and run the risk thereby of en-
countering one of his drunken RACES,
so the lonely girl never went to sing
ing school, coasting frolics, apple.
pairing bees, on any other of the rus
tic gatherings; her sole social pleasure
was going TO meeting Sundays and to
the Thursday evening lecture. She
was twenty years old the day she put
her mother TO bed, lifting her in
strong young arms from the cellar
floor, and calling in a chance passei
to send him after the doctor. 1t was
twenty-one years after that she laid
. that mother in her coffin and followed
it to the graveyard, whore it was
buried beside an uhloved and dishon
ored husband and father.
= That was Lydia's life. She was all
'--'A now; her sole possession the lit
house on the. village street
small garden, and few wood
\ the mountain side; perhaps
of rock and trees. She LIVED
mdreds of such women have
L. - 4 -