Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1890-08-28
MISS ANSTRUHHER'S TRIAL
BY ANNA SHIELDS,

In speaking of her niece, Miss Letitia
Anstruther was accustomed to plain
lively call her "the trial of my life" and,
for once, the expression was a simple
truth, entirely devoid of exaggeration.
Matte Anstruther certainly was trial.
''You know, my DEAR" Miss An
struther would say to one intimate friend
or another, my brother John went to
Texas twenty years ago. Don't ask me
who his wife was | don't know. l never
saw her. l never heard her name until
John died, and somebody sent his
child to me, with her baptismal rec
ord, Johns marriage certificate and the
lawyers letters, telling me she will have
about a hundred and fifty thousand dol
lars when she is twenty-one. John made
his money upon stock-farm, and after
his wife died, appears to have lived alone
with Matilda, on the ranch, she
calls it. She was sixteen when she came
here, and she was a perfect savage; a
sdUdge, my dear, and is very little better
now"
And savage the girl appeared to her
neat, prim aunt, who nearly went into
convulsions over crooked table cloth,
and looked upon knowledge of house
keeping and needle-work as the climax
of womanly education.
Miss Anstruther's house was small, a
cottage set in an exact square of prim
garden, but every room was the perfec-
tion of order and cleanliness, and small
income was economical and nursed to
give a margin for Berlin woods and tidy
cotton, wherewith in the leisure hours
left by household care, the old maid
manufactured wonderful articles for the
ornamentation (or otherwise) of her par
lor and guest-room.
Into this domain there had been thrust
lank, tall girl of sixteen, in shabby |.
mourning, grieving violently for the loss
of her only friend, her father. A girl
who wore thick-soled boots which She
never wiped upon the door-mat, whose
profusion of hair was gathered into net
loosely, anyhow, as her aunt remarked, |
who had never owned a collar or a pair |
OF cuffs, nor had ever seen carpet.
And yet, girl who could read Homer !
and Virgil in the original, was acauaint-
ed with Shakespeare, Milton and Chau-
Ger as familiar friends, could solve geo
metrical problems and make the church
organ speak, but never had fashioned
garment or knotted Berlin wool.
And she seemed utterly untamable. In
vain Miss Anstruther scoldcd and
groaned, in vain grew pathetic and tear
tul. Matte would Glitter upn her neat
rooms with growing ferns, birds nests,
leaves, flowers, stones. would have
John's horrid books" piled in her own
hn1rnpm eha1,yo, /
hoor; would not learn to stir puddings
or hem towels, and darted about like an
elf, regardless of furniture or decorum.
Now she was singing in a glorious CON
tralto the widest OF glees, now sobbinp
convulsively over some scrap of paper
folded away by her fathers hand, and
newly discovered by the girl in her de
sultory reading. She would sit on the
best sofas with her feet tucked under her,
and wear the ample handsome wardrobe
Miss Anstruther ordered out of her lib
eral allowance, with utter disregard of
the oprieties-wrapper in the evening
and evening dresses at breakfast, g iusf
as it happened"
In the first two years of her life at
Doncester, it would have been hard to
say which was more miserable in the little
cottage, the prim maiden lady or the
wayward niece.
She was seated under the shade of q
willow, one June afternoon. looking
mocdily into the water OF little brook
% her feet, while the Reverend Albert
'hew finished little lecture Miss
luther had asked him to deliver.
was tall, ear-sighted, bashful