The little village of Westbrook seemed to have been standing still, while all the rest of the world had gone on. The people lived very much as their fathers and grandfathers had lived before them. They were all farmers except the doctor and the minister.  
The doctor was a very skilful man; but he had been reared on a Westbrook farm, and when he went out into the world to get his medical education he had brought back with him, to quiet Westbrook, only the knowledge he sought, and none of the airs and graces of town life.
 
The minister, too, was Westbrook born and bred, and his wife had scarcely ever been outside the town in all her days, so that there was no one in the simple community to set extravagant fashions, or turn foolish heads by gayety or splendor.
 
THIN ICE
THIN ICE.—Page 100.
 
[Pg 101]
 
It was, therefore, as much of an event as if Queen Victoria herself were to come and spend the winter in Boston, when it became generally known that a rich widow lady and her son were to come, the last of September, and very probably stay on through the winter under Dr. Simms's roof. A famous city physician, with whom Dr. Simms had studied once, had recommended him and Westbrook to Mrs. Rosenburgh, when it became necessary for her to take her puny boy into some still, country retreat.
 
They came during the last golden days of September, and all Westbrook was alive with interest about them. The lady looked delicate, but she was as pretty as she was pale, and her boy was curiously like her,—as pale, as pretty, almost as feminine.
 
There was plenty of opportunity to see them, for the city doctor had given orders that the young gentleman should keep out of doors all the time; so, mornings, he and his mother were always to be seen in their low, luxurious carriage, drawn by high-stepping bay horses, and[Pg 102] driven by a faithful, careful, middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair and an impenetrable face.
 
Sometimes, in the afternoons, they would all be out again, but oftener Mrs. Rosenburgh remained at home, and her son drove, for himself, a pair of pretty black ponies, while the impenetrable, iron-gray man sat behind, ready to seize the reins in case of accident.
 
At first the boy's face seemed often drawn by pain, or white with weariness, and he would look round him listlessly, as he drove, with eyes that saw nothing, or at least failed to find any object of interest. But the clear autumn air proved invigorating, and when the glorious, prismatic days of late October came he looked as if, indeed, he had been re-created.
 
And now one could see that he began to take a natural, human interest in what went on around him. He would drive up his little pony carriage to the wall, and look over it to watch the apple-pickers and the harvesters. No one spoke to him, and he spoke to no one. The lads of his own age, who watched his ponies with boyish[Pg 103] envy, never dreamed that the owner of these fairy coursers could be as shy as one of themselves, and, indeed, as much more shy as delicate weakness naturally is than rosy strength. They thought his silence was pride, and felt a half-defiant hatred of him accordingly.
 
Yet many and many a day he went home to his mother, and sitting beside her with his head upon her knee, cried out, in very bitterness,—
 
"Oh if I only could be like one of those healthy boys! How gladly I'd give up Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed, to be able to run about as they do! Shall I never, never be strong, mamma?"
 
And she would comfort him with the happy truth that every day he was growing stronger, and that she expected him to be her great, brave boy, by and by, who would take care of her all the days of her life.
 
Meantime, other boys, in other homes, talked to other mothers. For the very first time the evil spirit of envy had crept into quiet Westbrook.
 
[Pg 104]
 
Why should Ralph Rosenburgh have every thing he wanted, and they nothing? What clothes he wore,—and a watch, a real gold watch they had seen him take out of his pocket,—and those ponies; for wherever they began they always ended with those ponies. And, as not all the mothers in Westbrook were wise, any more than elsewhere in the world, while the wise ones would say that strong boy-legs were worth more than horses' legs, the weak ones would foster the evil spirit, and answer,—
 
"He ain't a bit better than you are, with all his watches and ponies. Pride will have a fall some day, see if it don't, and he may be glad enough to stand in your shoes yet, before he dies."
 
Jack Smalley was the son of one of these injudicious mothers, and so his envy grew, unchecked; till he nourished a vigorous hatred for Ralph Rosenburgh in his heart, without ever having exchanged a single word with him.
 
It was a hatred, however, of which its object never could have dreamed. He had been so accustomed to be petted and pitied, and he was[Pg 105] so very sorry for himself, that he could not be a wide-awake, vigorous, ball-playing, leaping, running boy, it would never have occurred to him that any one else could fail to see his condition in the same light.
 
So he went steadily on the even tenor of his way, gaining something day by day and week by week, and hoping—how earnestly no one knew—for the happy time when Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed might stand idle in their stalls, and he go about on his own feet with the rest.
 
The cold weather came on early that year. Before the middle of December Westbrook pond was frozen over, and then began the winter's fun. Every afternoon Ralph Rosenburgh drove his ponies down to the very edge of the pond, and sat there for awhile, a patient looker-on at the frolics he could not share.
 
With Christmas, however, there came to him from the fond, maternal Santa Claus, a chair constructed on purpose for pushing over the ice, and then he became a daily partaker in the festivities upon the pond. The chair was modelled[Pg 106] after a certain kind of invalid, garden chair, which is arranged to be either propelled by some one else from behind, or by the occupant turning a kind of crank at the sides.
 
Ralph soon learned to manage it for himself, and finding himself strong enough to do so, he used to make the iron-gray man stay with the ponies, while he himself moved round among the skaters.
 
And, now that he seemed really one of themselves, the young people, all except Jack Smalley, began to feel a kindly interest in him. Jack alone went on hating him more and more, finding daily fresh causes of offence in this boy who wore velvet and fur in place of his own coarse gray cloth, and woollen, hand-knit comforter. What was he, this puny wretch, without pluck enough to stand on his own legs, that he should wear the garments of a young prince? You see that Master Smalley had the primitive idea of young princes, and supposed them clad in everlasting velvet and ermine. But there were no princes in America, thank Heaven, and nobody[Pg 107] in Westbrook wanted fools round who tried to look like king's sons. Very innocent of trying to look like any one wa............