Just ten years since daddy took me
out of the poor-house! How kind they've all been to me! Frederic and
Elinor and mammy, and, for the most part, Aunt Bethiah, though she is
very precise. If I could only forget where I came from. Captain Welles
says it is false pride; but that doesn't hinder its plaguing me. When a
thorn pricks, it pricks, whether of a rose-bush or a bramble.

As long as I went to school the boys called me "Poor'us," "Poor'us,"
only when Frederic was by they didn't dare, for fear of his thrashing
them, he was so stout and tall; and he has been growing ever since. Aunt
Bethiah says it is reaching and tiptoeing up to the high shelves after
company-cake, that makes him so tall. I heard her telling mammy that she
fairly laid awake nights, contriving places where to hide things.

"Poor Freddy," says mammy, "he don't have no great of an appetite to
eat."

"News to me," says Aunt Bethiah.

She's always on the look-out for him; but, with the whole house on her
shoulders, she can't be everywhere. Last fall, while the shoemaker was
here making up our winter shoes, Frederic got him to put squeaking
leather into one of hers, and not into the mate of it. Then he could
tell her step, for she would go "squeak," "----," "squeak," "----."
Mammy knew, for her arm-chair wasn't a great ways off from the
shoe-bench; but then Frederic's her idol, and all he does is right.
Many's the nice bit she has tucked away for him, when Aunt Bethiah's
back was turned; and does yet, for all he's a man grown.

He laughs at his grandmother about her plasters and medicines; but he is
as full of feeling as he is of fun. Gets up the coldest nights in
winter, when she's taken worse, to run for the neighbors, crying, when
he thinks nobody sees. Who would think, to see him in his capers, he
could ever shed a tear? Nights, when the chores are done, he sits down
close to mammy, till the candles are lit. When he was little, 't would
be on a cricket, with his head in her lap, and saying his verses; and
she would tell him of his pious mother, who had a lovely countenance,
and who died young, being willing to go; or of his father, who mourned
himself into the grave, for the loss of his dear young wife.

But now he has grown up, he relates to her whatever has happened through
the day, if it is only the finding of a hen's nest. This serves to take
up her mind, and gives her something to look forward to. After that he
reads, or does odd jobs of me