Johnny Tremain Read Online Free PDF Page B

reading and writing and all that. She was determined I shouldn't grow up untaught—like Dove and Dusty. She wanted me to be something.'
    'That's why you work so hard?'
    'That's why. Mrs. Lapham promised your grandpa would take me on just as soon as she was buried. She died—and he did. That's all.'
    'What was her name? And how come she—a poor sewing woman—was so well learned?'
    "Roundabout here she called herself just Mrs. Tremain, but she was born Lavinia Lyte. She came of gentlefolk.'
    'Just like Mr. Lyte's daughter?'
    'Yes. She told me once that for over a hundred years Lytes have favored Jonathan and Lavinia as names.'
    'Johnny, didn't she ever go to those rich relatives and say, "Here I am"?'
    'No. And she told me not to—ever. Unless ... only, if I'd got to the end of everything. She'd say, "Johnny, if there is not one thing left for you and you have no trade and no health, and God Himself has turned away His face from you, then go to Merchant Lyte and show him your cup and tell him your mother told you before she died that you are kin to him. He will know the kinship, she said, and in pity he may help you." '
    'Your cup?'
    'She said I wasn't to sell it—ever. I was to go hungry and cold first.'
    'Where is your cup?'
    'In my sea chest in the attic. That's why I keep it locked.'
    'Will you show me your cup?'
    'If you swear by your hope of Heaven and your fear of Hell never, never to mention any of this to anyone. Never tell my true name, nor that I have a cup.'
    'But Isannah?'
    'If she's heard anything, she'll think it was a story I made up—like those rubies in the fruit cake.'
    Now it was close to morning. Far off a cock crew. Near-by another answered. The dawn breeze came up from off the sea and the black night turned gray. Cilla was shivering and stood up. Johnny shouldered Isannah.
6
    He kept his word to Cilla, and, as he was putting the little girl back to bed, he slipped to the attic, unlocked his chest, and brought down the cup in the flannel bag his mother had made. He opened the door from the shop to the wharf. Although still dark inside the house, outside it was growing lighter and lighter.
    Gulls flew in from the islands looking for food.
    Cilla joined him and he motioned her to follow him out into the twilight of the new day. He drew his cup from its bag.
    As a small child he had thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. It was the reason why he had begged his mother to apprentice him to a silversmith (and there were none in Townsend, Maine). Now he was more critical of the cup. He thought it too chunky. On one side was engraved the crest of the Lytes. This was an eye rising up from the sea. From it rays of light (or lashes) streamed out, half-covering the surface of the cup. It was this emblem Merchant Lyte had on everything he owned—carved above his counting house on Long Wharf, engraved on all his silver—even on dog collars and harnesses. Miss Lavinia had it stamped on her Spanish-leather gloves. Johnny knew it was cut on the slate gravestones of the Lyte family on Copp's Hill.
    'The same as his,' said Cilla in wonder.
    'And the same motto. Look!'
    She read the words in her halting manner: 'Let there be Lyte.'
    And miraculously, as she stumbled over these words, there was light, for the sun came up out of the sea.
    The children stood and looked at each other. The girl's face showed her excitement—and her fatigue. It was a pointed, sweet little face, her eyes a lighter brown than Isannah's and her hair not so strikingly pale.
    Johnny whispered, 'Just like the sun coming up yonder out of the sea, pushing rays of light ahead of it.'
    Cilla (evidently thinking Johnny was getting beyond himself) said, 'Might it not just as well be a
setting
eye?' It was the first sour remark she had made to him all the night.
    'No, no. My mother said it is a rising eye. But I was to keep whist and mum about it—unless even God has turned away His face. And Cilla ...