Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 24: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

8 Tom ANpDERSON, DareE-DEvIt to Fort Pitt; and in a short time succeeded in giving repose to the frontiers.’’ Dare, pretty as a pink, was as fond of dogs and horses, fishing and fox-hunting, as her brothers. Withal, she had a way of finding out all sorts of lorn and luckless creatures, was always busy in behalf of some ‘“po'ly” thing, from the old gander which had lost a foot in a fox-trap — she contrived a wooden prop for it, and Pat Carr said, “The ould burrud’s ez light o’ fut ez me- silf!’”” — to the overseer’s boy when he was bitten by a rattler. Who didn’t know that story? Dare, then only ten, was the first to reach the screaming boy. She snatched a setting hen from its nest, cut off its head, opened the bird like a melon, and applied the warm flesh to the wound. Instanter she made one of the hands pull bird after bird out of the “‘roostin’-tree,’’ chop off the head of each, and apply, one after another, to the snake-bitten foot. When the grown-ups got there the ground was strewn with headless fowls, — sponges green with virus, every one, —and “Shug” was, in the vernacular, “jes’ a-bell- erin’, — but safe. Besides the family, there were two other members of the household at Oxheart, Mimi and Ole. Mimi de I’Isle was hardly fifteen when she came to Virginia as nursery- governess to the two younger Andersons. Thereafter she grew up with her charges. Oddly enough, the French girl had acquired little English in her seven years at Oxheart. Tom said Mimi and Unaka were both “ergin English.” Naturally, the young Andersons came to chatter like parrakeets in French,— with which object ma’m’selle was in charge of them. ‘The Anderson brood set great store by the little governess, the more because their mother came of French Catholics, one of the old Eastern Shore families of Maryland,—whence Tom’s full name, Thomas Cecil Calvert Anderson. Mimi had but one care in the world: being a good Catholic, she cherished a little waxen image of the Madonna brought with her from Marseilles. The tiny statuette was protected by a glass “bell,”’ so its flesh-tints and gilding were uncankered; and it was a very (E(0) m CONNIE KOOKS