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  [Transcriber's Note

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[Illustration: Day after day Johnny watched.--PAGE 15.]




                 NEW

          BED-TIME STORIES.


                 BY

       LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON,

     AUTHOR OF “BED-TIME STORIES,”
       “MORE BED-TIME STORIES,”
  “SOME WOMEN’S HEARTS,” AND “POEMS.”


         _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS._


            [Illustration]


                BOSTON:
      LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,
                 1907




          _Copyright_, 1880,
      BY LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.


  ALFRED MUDGE & SON, INC., PRINTERS,
        BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A.




_TO MISTRESS BROWN-EYES._


    _At Christmas-tide, by Christmas fire,
      You’ll read these tales of mine;--
    I see, above my story-book,
      Your happy brown eyes shine._

    _Dear eyes, that front the future time
      So fearlessly to-day,
    Oh, may from them some kindly Fate
      Keep future tears away,_

    _And give you all your heart desires,
      My little English maid,
    For whom, in this far-distant land,
      My loving prayers are said!_

    _I pray for Peace, since Peace is good,
      For Love, since Love is best:
    If prayers bring blessings, Brown-eyed Girl,
      How much you will be blest!_

  _L. C. M._

  _August, 1880._




CONTENTS.


                                     PAGE

  “ALL A-GROWIN’ AND A-BLOWIN’”         5

  MY VAGRANT                           20

  HELEN’S TEMPTATION                   35

  THE SURGEON OF THE DOLLS’ HOSPITAL   56

  PRETTY MISS KATE                     79

  A BORROWED ROSEBUD                   94

  TOM’S THANKSGIVING                  106

  FINDING JACK                        124

  HER MOTHER’S DAUGHTER               139

  MY QUARREL WITH RUTH                158

  WAS IT HER MOTHER?                  172

  THE LADY FROM OVER THE WAY          186

  HIS MOTHER’S BOY                    200

  DR. JOE’S VALENTINE                 217




NEW BED-TIME STORIES.




“ALL A-GROWIN’ AND A-BLOWIN’.”


It had been such a weary hunt for lodgings. Not that lodgings are
scarce in London. There are scores of streets, whole districts, indeed,
where the house that did not say “Apartments” in its window would be
the exception.

But Miss Endell wanted to combine a great deal. She must be economical,
for her funds were running low; she must be near the British Museum,
for she wanted to consult many authorities for the book about “Noted
Irishwomen,” by which she hoped to retrieve her fortunes; she wanted
quiet, too, and reasonably pretty things about her.

For a week she had spent most of her time in quest of the place where
she could settle herself comfortably for a few months. It was the gray
March weather. The mornings were dark, and the gloom of coming dusk
settled down early; and, during all the hours between, Miss Endell
had been busy in that weary work of which Dante speaks, “climbing the
stairs of others.”

At last, after much consideration, she had decided to make a certain
flight of stairs her own. She had taken the drawing-room floor of No.
30 Guilford Street; and with a comfortable feeling of success she had
paid her bill at the Charing Cross Hotel, and driven to her new home.

The drawing-room floor--that is to say, the suite of rooms up
one flight of stairs from the street--is the most important part
of a London lodging-house. Whoever is kept waiting, when “the
drawing-room”--as it is the fashion to designate the lodger who
occupies that apartment--rings, the ring must at once be “answered to.”
That floor rents for as much as all the rest of the house put together,
and is the chief dependence of anxious landladies.

Miss Endell, accordingly, was received as a person of importance. Her
boxes were brought upstairs, and her landlady, Mrs. Stone, bustled
about cheerfully, helping her to arrange things.

At last every thing was comfortably placed, and the tired new-comer
settled herself in a low chair in front of the glowing coal-fire, and
glanced around her.

Mrs. Stone was still busy, wiping away imperceptible dust. The door was
open, and in the doorway was framed a singular face, that of a pale,
slender child, with a figure that looked too tall for the face, and
great eager eyes, with such a wistful, silent longing in them as Miss
Endell had never seen before.

At the same moment Mrs. Stone also caught sight of the child, and cried
out a little crossly,--

“Go away, you plague! Didn’t I tell you as you wasn’t to ’ang round the
new lady, a-worritin’ her?”

The child’s wistful face colored, and the tears sprang to the great,
sad eyes; but he was silently turning away, when Miss Endell herself
spoke. She was not specially fond of children; but she had a kind
heart, and something in the wan, pitiful face of the child touched it.

“Don’t send him away, Mrs. Stone,” she said kindly. “Come in, my little
man, and tell me what your name is.”

The child sidled in, timidly, but did not speak.

“Don’t be afraid,” Miss Endell said. “What is your name?”

“Bless you, ma’am, he _can’t_ speak!” said Mrs. Stone.

“Can’t speak?”

“No; he was born with something wrong. Laws, he can hear as well as
anybody, and he knows all you say to him; but there’s something the
matter. The last ‘drawing-room’ said that there was doctors, she was
sure, as could help him, but I haint any money to try experiments.

“Johnny was my brother’s child. His father died before he was born, and
his mother lived just long enough to ’and over Johnny to me, and ask me
to take care of him.

“I’ve done my best; but a lodging-house is a worrit. What with empty
rooms, and lodgers as didn’t pay, and hard times, I never got money
enough ahead to spend on doctors.

“But you mustn’t have Johnny a-worritin’ round. You’d get sick o’ that.
The last ‘drawing-room’ said it made her that nervous to see him; and I
halways thought she went off partly for that.”

“I will not let him trouble me, don’t be afraid; but let him sit down
here by the fire, and when I find he disturbs me I’ll send him away.”

Mrs. Stone vanished, and Johnny took up his station on a stool in a
corner of the hearth-rug.

Miss Endell busied herself with a book, but from time to time she
looked at the boy. His face was pale and wistful still, but a
half-smile, as sad as tears, was round his poor silent mouth, and he
was gazing at his new friend as if he would fix every line of her face
in his memory for ever.

For a long hour he sat there; and then Mrs. Stone came to lay the cloth
for dinner, and sent him away to bed.

The next morning he appeared again; and soon it grew to be his habit to
sit, almost all the day through, and watch Miss Endell at her tasks.
In spite of her absorption, he occupied a good many of her thoughts.

Like him, she was an orphan; and she had few close and vital interests
in her life. She got to feel as if it belonged to her, in a certain
way, to look after this silent waif of humanity more lonely still than
herself.

Often she took an hour from her work to read little tales to him, and
it was reward enough to see how his eyes brightened, and the color
came into his pale little face. She used to think that if her work
succeeded, Johnny should also be the better for it. As soon as the
first edition of “Noted Irishwomen” was sold, she would have the best
medical advice for him; and if there were such a thing as giving those
lips language, it should be done.

“Should you _like_ to speak to me, Johnny?” she asked one day suddenly.

The boy looked at her, for one moment, with eyes that seemed to grow
larger and larger. Then came a great rush of sobs and tears that shook
him so that Miss Endell was half-frightened at the effect of her own
words. She bent over and put her hand on his head.

“Don’t, Johnny! Don’t, dear!” she said tenderly.

I doubt if any one had ever called the poor little dumb boy “dear”
before, in all his eleven years of life. He looked up through his
tears, with a glad, strange smile, as if some wonderful, sweet thing
had befallen him; and then, in a sort of timid rapture, he kissed the
hem of Miss Endell’s gown, and the slippered foot that peeped out
beneath it.

I think there is an instinct of motherhood in good women that comes
out toward all helpless creatures; and it awoke then in Miss Endell’s
heart. After that she and Johnny were almost inseparable. Often she
took him with her on her walks, and always when she worked he kept his
silent vigil on the hearth-rug.

Miss Endell had one extravagance. She could not bear to be without
flowers. She did not care much for the cut and wired bouquets of the
florist, but she seldom came home from her walks without some handful
of wall-flowers, or a knot of violets or forget-me-nots. Now and then
she bought a tea-rose bud; and then Johnny always noticed how lovingly
she tended it--how she watched it bursting from bud to flower.

He got to know that this strange, bright creature whom he idolized
loved flowers, and loved tea-roses best of all. A wild desire grew in
him to buy her tea-roses--not one, only, but a whole bunch. He spent
his days in thinking how it was to be done, and his nights in dreaming
about it. A penny was the largest sum he had ever possessed in his
life, and a penny will not buy one tea-rose, much less a bunch of them.

One day Miss Endell took him with her when she went to see a friend. It
was a prosperous, good-natured, rich woman in whose house they found
themselves. “Go and see the pictures, Johnny,” Miss Endell said; and
Johnny wandered down the long room, quite out of ear-shot.

Then she told his pathetic little story, and her friend’s careless yet
kind heart was touched. When it was time for Miss Endell to go, she
summoned Johnny; and then the lady they were visiting gave the boy a
half-crown, a whole shining, silver half-crown.

Johnny clasped it to his heart in expressive pantomime, and lifted his
wistful, inquiring eyes.

“Yes, it is all yours,” the lady said, in answer; “and don’t let any
one take it away from you.”

Small danger, indeed, of that! The piece of silver meant but one thing
to Johnny,--tea-roses, unlimited tea-roses.

The next day he was taken ill. He had a fever,--a low, slow fever. His
aunt was kind enough to him, but she had plenty to do, and Johnny would
have been lonely indeed but for Miss Endell.

She had him brought each morning into her room, and kept him all day
lying on her sofa, giving him now a kind word, now a draught of cold
water, and then a few grapes, with the sun’s secret in them.

One day Johnny drew something from his bosom, and put it into Miss
Endell’s hand. It was the silver half-crown. He made her understand,
by his expressive gestures, that she was to keep it for him; and she
dropped it into a drawer of her writing-desk.

At last Johnny began to get well. June came, with all its summer sights
and sounds, and strength came with its softer winds to the poor little
waif. One day he stood before Miss Endell, and put out his hand. She
understood, and dropped the half-crown into it. He hid it, with a sort
of passion, in his bosom, and Miss Endell smiled. Did even this little
waif, then, care so much for money?

As soon as he could stand, he took up his station on the balcony
outside the windows, and watched and watched.

His friend thought only that the sights and sounds of the street amused
him. She was working on at the “Noted Irishwomen,” which was nearing
its conclusion, and it quite suited her that Johnny found the street so
interesting.

As for the child, he was possessed by only one idea,--tea-roses. He
watched to see the hand-barrows come along, flower-laden and tempting.

These same hand-barrows are a feature of London street life. They
are full of plants growing in pots, and also there are plenty of
cut flowers. The venders cry, as they pass along, “All a-growin’ and
a-blowin’!” and there is something exciting in the cry. It seems part
of the summer itself.

Day after day, day after day, Johnny watched and watched. Flowers
enough went by,--geraniums glowing scarlet in the sun, azaleas, white
heath, violets,--only never any tea-roses.

But at last, one morning, he heard the familiar cry, “_All a-growin’
and a-blowin’!_” and lo! as if they had bloomed for his need, there
were tea-roses--whole loads of tea-roses!

Miss Endell was busy, just then, with Lady Morgan. She never noticed
when the little silent figure left the window, and hurried downstairs.
Out into the street that little figure went, and on and on, in hot
pursuit of the flower-barrow, which by this time had quite the start of
him.

Down one street, up another, he ran, and always with the silver
half-crown tightly clasped in the palm of his little hand.

At last a customer detained the barrow; and Johnny hurried up to it,
panting and breathless. He put his hand out towards the tea-roses, and
then he held out his silver half-crown.

The flower-seller looked at him curiously, “Why don’t you speak, young
’un?” he said. “Are you dumb? You want this ’alf-crown’s wuth o’ them
tea-roses?”

Johnny nodded vehemently.

The man took up a great handful of the pale sweet flowers, and thrust
them into the boy’s hands, taking in exchange the half-crown, and
putting it away in a sort of pouch, along with many silver mates.

As for Johnny, there are in every life supreme moments, and his came
then. He held in his hand the flowers that Miss Endell loved, and he
was going to give them to her.

All his life he had felt himself in every one’s way. She, only, had
made him welcome to her side. She had called him “dear,”--and now
there was something he could do for her. She had loved one tea-rose:
how much, then, would she love a whole handful of tea-roses! His heart
swelled with a great wave of pride and joy.

He thought of nothing but his flowers,--how should he?--and he never
even heard or saw the butcher’s cart, tearing along at such a pace as
John Gilpin never dreamed of. And in a moment, something had pushed him
down,--something rolled and crunched over him,--and he knew nothing;
but he held the flowers tight through it all.

“Why, it’s Mrs. Stone’s dumb Johnny!” said the butcher-boy, who had
got down from his cart by this time, and was addressing the quickly
assembled London crowd. “Gi ’e a hand, and lift un up into my cart, and
I’ll carry un home.”

An awful inarticulate groan came from the poor child’s dumb lips as
they lifted him; but his hold on the tea-roses never loosened.

They carried him home, and into the house. Mrs. Stone was shocked and
grieved; and she took her troubles noisily, as is the fashion of her
class. Miss Endell, still fagging away at Lady Morgan, heard cries and
shrieks, and dropped her pen and hastened downstairs.

“He’s dead! Johnny’s dead!” cried Mrs. Stone and Miss Endell, white and
silent, drew near.

But Johnny was not dead, though he was dying fast. The butcher-boy had
hurried off for a doctor and the three women, Mrs. Stone, her maid, and
her lodger, stood by helplessly.

Suddenly Johnny’s wandering look rested on Miss Endell. A great sweet
smile of triumph curved his mouth, lighted his eyes, kindled all his
face. With one grand last effort, he put out the bunch of tea-roses,
and pressed them into her hand.

And then, as if death had somehow been more merciful to him than life,
and had in some way loosed his poor bound tongue, he stammered out the
only words he had ever spoken--was ever to speak,--

“_For you!_”

At length the doctor came and stood there, helpless like the rest, for
death was stronger than all his skill. The shock and the hurt together
had quenched the poor frail life that was ebbing so swiftly.

Miss Endell bent and kissed the white quivering lips. As she did so,
the tea-roses she held touched the little face.

Was it their subtile fragrance, or this kiss, or both together, which
seemed for one moment to recall the departing soul?

He looked up; it was his last look, and it took in the sweet woman who
had been so gentle and so loving to him, and the flowers in her hand.

His face kindled with a great joy. A hero might have looked like that
who had died for his country, or a man who had given his life joyfully
for child or wife.

Johnny Stone had loved one creature well, and that creature had loved
tea-roses. What _could_ life have held so sweet as the death that found
him when he was striving to give her her heart’s desire?




MY VAGRANT.


We were in pursuit of Laura’s dressmaker, and had just rung the bell
at her door, when a little boy presented himself, and, standing on the
lower step, uplifted a pathetic pair of blue eyes, and a small tin
cup held in a little grimy hand. A large basket was on one arm; and
round his neck was one of those great printed placards, such as the
blind men wear who sit at the street corners. Laura’s purse was always
fuller than mine; and she was extracting a bit of scrip from it, while
I bent my near-sighted eyes on the boy’s label. Could it be that I read
aright? I looked again. No, I was not mistaken. It read, in great,
staring letters--

  I HAVE LOST MY HUSBAND IN THE WAR.

In the war! And those blue eyes had not opened, surely, till some time
after the war was ended! His husband! I was bewildered. I bent my gaze
on him sternly, and asked, as severely as I could,--

“Young man, can you read?”

Laura was fumbling away at the unanswered door-bell. The boy looked as
if he wanted to run; but I put my hand on his arm.

“Can you read?” I repeated gravely. I think he shook in his shabby
boots, for his voice was not quite steady as he answered,--

“Not much.”

“Not much, I should think. Do you know what this thing says that you’ve
got round your neck?”

“Does it say I’m blind?” he asked, with a little frightened quaver.

“No, it says--but do you know what a husband is?”

“Yes, he comes home drunk, and beats Mag and me awful.”

“Did you ever know a boy of your age to have a husband?”

The blue eyes grew so wide open that I wondered if they could ever
shut themselves up again; and Laura, who had turned round at my
question, looked as if she thought I had suddenly gone mad. The little
dressmaker had opened the door, and stood there waiting meekly, with
the handle in her hand. But my spirit was up, and I did not care for
either of them. I asked again, very impressively, as I thought, with a
pause after each word,--

“Did--you--ever--know--a--boy--of--your--age--to--have--a--husband?”

“No, marm,” he gasped, “husbands belongs to women.”

“Then what do you wear this thing for? It says that you have lost your
husband in the war.”

The imp actually turned pale, and I almost pitied him.

“Will they put me in prison?” he asked, an abject little whine coming
into his voice. “_Will_ they?”

“Did you steal it?”

“I didn’t to say steal it--I just _took_ it. I’d seen the rest put them
on when they went out begging, and this was old Meg’s. She wasn’t
going out to-day, and I thought no harm to borrow.”

“Then you can’t read?”

“Well, not to say read, marm. I think I could make out a word now and
then.”

“Do you want to?”

The face brightened a moment, and, with the curving lips and eager
eyes, was really that of a pretty boy.

“Oh, if I could!” half sighed the quivering lips; and then the smile
went out, and left blank despair behind it. “It’s no use, marm; she
won’t let me.”

“Who won’t? Your mother?”

“No, Mag’s mother--old Meg. My mother’s dead, and I never had any
father that ever I heard of; and since mother died old Meg does for
me; and every day she sends me out to beg; and if I don’t get much she
whips Mag.”

I was growing strangely interested.

“Whips _Mag_, because _you_ don’t get much?” I said doubtfully. “What
for?”

“I guess there’s a hard place on _me_, marm. She found that it didn’t
seem to hurt much, when she whipped _me_; and so one night Mag was
teasing her to stop, and she turned to and whipped Mag, and that made
me cry awful; and ever since, if I don’t get enough money, she whips
Mag.”

“Are you sure you are telling me the truth?”

I don’t know why I asked the question, for I saw honesty in those clear
eyes of his. He looked hurt. Yes, you may laugh if you want to, I’m
telling you just as it was--the boy looked as hurt as any of you would
if I doubted you. There came a sort of proud shame into his manner. He
clutched at the placard round his neck, as if he would tear it off, and
answered, sadly,--

“I s’pose I can’t expect anybody to believe me with this round my neck;
but, if you would go home with me, Mag could tell you, and you would
believe _her_.”

By this time Laura had gone in, leaving me to finish my interview
alone. I reflected a moment. The other day I had heard Tom say
he wanted an errand boy. Why should he not have this one? Tom was
my brother. I knew just the difficulties he would make,--want of
reference, a street beggar, a regular rat of the gutter. I could
fancy just how he would talk. I knew, too, that I could overrule his
objections. That’s a power women have when a man loves them; whether
he be husband or brother or friend. I hated the thought of vice and
ignorance and poverty. What if I could save just one small boy from
their clutches? I said resolutely,--

“Will you go home with me, and have a comfortable home and good food
and honest work, and no one ever to beat you, and learn to read?”

I had seen no assent in his eyes till I came to this last clause of my
sentence. Then he asked shrewdly,--

“Who’ll teach me? I can’t go to school and do my work, too.”

“I will teach you. Will you go and work faithfully for my brother, and
learn to read?”

“Won’t I, just?”

“Well, then, let me speak to the lady who went in, and I’ll take you
home at once.”

He shuffled uneasily.

“If you please, marm, I can’t go till I’ve been back to Meg’s, and
carried her this board.”

“But I’ll get a policeman to send a messenger with that. If you go,
perhaps she won’t let you come to me.”

“Yes, marm, I shall come. But you wouldn’t believe me, sure, if I could
steal away, like, and never say good-by to Mag, and let her cry both
her eyes out thinking I’d been shut up, or somebody had killed me.”
And his own great blue eyes grew pathetic again over this picture of
sorrowful possibilities.

“Well, you may go,” I said, half reluctantly, for the little vagabond
had inspired in me a singular interest. “You may go, and be sure you
come to-night or in the morning, to 70 Deerham Street, and ask for Miss
May.”

He looked at me with a grave, resolved look.

“I shall come,” he said; and in an instant he was gone.

That night, after dinner, I told Tom. He was mocking, incredulous,
reluctant--just as I knew he would be. But it all ended in his
promising to try “My Vagrant,” if he ever came.

Just as I had brought him to this pass, the bell rang, and I sprang to
the dining-room door. The dining-room was the front basement, and the
outside door was so near that I opened it myself. It was, indeed, my
vagrant.

“I want Miss May,” he said, with the air which such a _gamin_ puts on
when he speaks to a servant,--an air which instantly subdued itself
into propriety when he heard my voice.

I took him in to Tom; and I saw the blue eyes softened even the
prejudiced mind and worldly heart of Mr. Thomas May. He spoke very
kindly to the boy, and then sent him into the kitchen for his supper.

“Where do you propose to keep this new acquisition?” he asked me, after
the blue-eyed was out of sight.

“In this house, if you please. There is a little single bed all ready
for him in the attic, and I’ve arranged with cook to give him a bath
and then put him into some of the clothes her own boy left behind him
when he went away to sea. I mean to rescue this one soul from a starved
and miserable and wicked life, and I’m willing to take some pains; and
if you aren’t willing to do your part I’m ashamed of you.”

Tom laughed, and called me his “fierce little woman,” his “angry
turtle-dove,” and half-a-dozen other names which he never gave me
except when he was in good humor, so I knew it was all right.

Before three days were over Tom owned that my vagrant, as he persisted
in calling the boy (though we knew now that his name was Johnny True),
was the best errand boy he had ever employed. I myself taught him to
read, as I had promised, and brighter scholar never teacher had. In
four months he had progressed so fast that he could read almost any
thing. There had been a sort of feverish eagerness in his desire to
learn for which I was at a loss to account. Sometimes, coming home
from some party or opera, I would find him studying in the kitchen at
midnight.

We grew fond of him, all of us. Cook said he was no trouble, and he
made it seem as if she had her own boy back again. He waited on Tom
with a sort of dog-like faithfulness; and, as for me, I believe that he
would have cut his hand off for me at any time.

Yet one morning he got up and deliberately walked out of the house.
When his breakfast was ready cook called for him in vain, and in vain
she searched for him from attic to cellar. But before it was time
for Tom to go to business another boy came, a little older than my
vagrant,--a nice, respectable-looking boy,--and asked for Mr. May. He
came into the dining-room and stood there, cap in hand.

“If you please, sir,” he said bashfully, “Johnny True wants to know if
you’ll be so good as to take me on in his place, considering that he
isn’t coming back any more, and I have done errands before, and got
good reference.”

He had made his little speech in breathless haste, running all his
sentences together into one.

Tom looked at him deliberately, and lit a cigar.

“Johnny isn’t coming back, hey?”

“No, sir.”

“Where is Johnny gone?”

“He didn’t tell me, if you please, but he said he should be hurt to
death if it troubled you to lose him, and he knew I could do as well as
he could.”

I saw a refusal in Tom’s eyes, so I made haste to forestall it.

“Do take him,” I said in a low tone to Tom, and then I said to the boy
that just now he had better go to the store, and Mr. May would see him
presently, when he came to business.

Tom laughed, a half-amused, half-provoked laugh, when he went out, and
said,--

“Well, my dear, I don’t think your vagrant has proved to be such a
success that you need expect me to let him choose my next errand boy.”

“I think, at least, that if he has sent you one as good as himself you
will have no fault to find,” I said hotly. But all the time there was
a sore place in my own heart, for I had thought that my vagrant would
have loved me too well to run away from me in this way.

That night Tom said that the new errand boy was doing well, and he
had concluded to keep him on. I think Tom missed my vagrant; but not,
of course, so much as I missed my bright scholar--my grateful little
follower.

Of course, the new boy lived in his own home, wherever that might be. I
did not concern myself about him, or feel any disposition to put him in
the little bed in the front attic.

Two or three weeks passed and we heard no word from Johnny True. But at
last a rainy day came, and with it Johnny, asking for Miss May.

“I guess he’s repented,” cook said, coming upstairs to tell me. I went
down to Johnny, resolved to be equal to the occasion--to meet him with
all the severity his ungrateful behavior deserved. But, somehow, the
wistful look in his blue eyes disarmed me. He was a little thin and
pale, too; and my heart began to soften even before he spoke.

“I couldn’t stay away, ma’am,” he said, with the clear accent he had
caught so quickly from my brief teaching, “and not let you know why I
went.”

“To let me know _when_ you went would have been more to the purpose,” I
answered, with what sternness I could command. “I had thought better of
you, Johnny, than that you were capable of running away.”

“But you see, ma’am, I was afraid you would not let me go if I told
you.”

“And why did you want to go? Were you not comfortable?”

“Yes, ma’am--that was the worst of it.”

“Why the worst of it? Have you any especial objection to be
comfortable?”

Suddenly the blue eyes filled with tears, like a girl’s; and there was
a pitiful sob in the voice which answered me.

“Oh, it hurt me so, when I was warm, and had a good supper, and
everybody’s kind word, to think of poor Mag there at home, cold and
hungry, and with old Meg beating her. I never should have come and left
her but for the learning to read. _She_ wanted me to come for that.”

“So you could read to her?”

“So I could _teach_ her, ma’am. You never in all your life saw anybody
so hungry to learn to read as Mag; and when I went home that first day
and told her all you said, and told her that after all I couldn’t go
and leave her there to take all the hard fare and hard words, she just
began to cry, and to tease me to go and learn to read, so I could teach
her, until I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I came.”

“And how did she know she would ever see you again?” I asked. “It would
have been most natural, having learned what comfort was, to stay on
here and enjoy it.”

“Mag _knew me_, ma’am,” said my vagrant, as proudly as a prince could
speak if his honor were called in question. “Mag knew what I was, and
I learned as fast as I could to get back to her--don’t you think so,
ma’am?”

“You learned faster than any one else could; I know that,” I answered.
“But, Johnny, how could you bear to go back to begging again?”

“I couldn’t bear it, ma’am, and I didn’t. I had money enough, that
Mr. Tom had given me, to buy myself a stock of papers. I’m a newsboy
now, and I teach Mag to read out of the papers I have left. And old Meg
knows better now than to beat Mag, and we are so much happier. It’s all
owing to you; and I came back to thank you,--but I never could forsake
Mag for long. I must stay with my own.”

“But they are not your own.”

“Mag is, ma’am.”

He was as resolute to ally himself, for that girl’s sake, with poverty,
and, if need were, shame, as ever was a hero to live or die for the
land of his birth; and out in the rain, down the desolate street, I
watched my vagrant go away from me for ever. But I did not pity him. No
soul is to be pitied which has reached life’s crowning good,--the power
to love another better than itself. Nor do I know any curled darling of
fortune who seems to me happier than was my vagrant.




HELEN’S TEMPTATION.


The sun was almost setting, but its low light came in at the western
windows, and lit up a pale face lying upon the pillows, till it seemed
to the watchers beside the bed as if some glory from heaven had already
touched the brow of the dying. These watchers were only two,--a girl of
fourteen, rather tall of her age, with gray eyes that were almost green
sometimes, and dark hair, short like a boy’s, and curling all over her
head; and a middle-aged woman, who had tended this girl when a baby,
and was half friend, half servant, to the dying mother.

Mrs. Ash had been lying all the day, almost in silence. Her husband had
brought her, a year before, to California, because she was stricken
with consumption, and he hoped the change from the harsh east winds of
New England to the balmy airs of the Pacific coast might restore her
to health.

For a time the result had seemed to fulfil his hope; but, very
suddenly, he himself had been taken ill and died; and then the
half-baffled disease seized again on the mourning wife, who had now no
strength to repel its onset.

I think she would fain have lived--even then, when all the joy seemed
gone from her life--for her daughter Helen’s sake; but she was too weak
to struggle, and so she lay there dying, quite aware of what was before
her.

All day she had seemed to be thinking, thinking, and waiting till she
had settled something in her own mind before she spoke. At last, with
the sunset light upon her face, she beckoned to the woman, who bent
nearer.

“As soon as all is over, Woods,” she said, as tranquilly as if she
were speaking of the most ordinary household arrangement, “you will
take Helen to my sister’s in Boston. You must make the journey by easy
stages, so as not to tire her too much. Fortunately she will not be
dependent. She has money enough, and she needs only care and love,
which my sister will give her, I know well.

“I shall be glad if you can stay with her; but that must of course be
as Mrs. Mason will arrange. You will find when my affairs are settled
that you have been remembered. You will lay me by my husband’s side,
and then take Helen away.

“All is arranged so that there can be no trouble, and now, if you
please, leave me a little while with my daughter.”

The woman went out of the room, and then Mrs. Ash opened her arms, and
Helen crept into them and lay there silently, as if she were a baby
again whom her mother comforted.

She was a strange compound, this Helen Ash, of impulsiveness and
self-control. She had an intense nature, and her temptations would grow
chiefly out of her tendency to concentrate all her heart on a single
object,--to seek whatever thing she wished for with an insistence which
would not be denied.

This quality has its great advantages certainly, but it has its extreme
dangers.

Helen had no brothers or sisters or special friends. She had loved only
her father and mother, but she had loved them with an almost excessive
devotion.

When her father died she had borne up bravely, that she might comfort
and help her mother, and now she was bearing up still, that she might
not sadden that parting soul with the anguish of her own.

As she lay there in her mother’s arms, her eyes were wide open and
tearless, but they were full of a desperate gloom sadder than tears.
She was almost as pale herself as was her mother.

“Darling,” the mother said tenderly, “how can I bear to leave you all
alone? Promise me one thing only, to open your heart to new love. It
would be so like you to shut yourself up in your grief, and to fancy
you were loving me less if you let yourself care for your Aunt Helen.

“She will love you for my sake, and she must be your second mother now.
We were dearer than most sisters to each other, and she is a wise and
good woman.

“Her daughter, my namesake Laura, is just about your own age, and being
her mother’s daughter, she must be worth loving. Try to care for them,
my darling. The life which has no love in it is empty indeed. Will you
try?”

“O mamma,” the girl cried, with a sudden, desperate sob, “I _will_ try
because you bid me! I _will_ try; but oh, how _can_ I love them? How
_can_ I bear to see another girl happy with her mother, and to know
that you will never be with me any more--never in all the world? If I
call all day and all night, you will never hear nor answer! O my own
mother, _must_ you leave me?”

“My darling, yes. I would have lived for your sake if I could. You have
been my comfort always. Comfort me a little longer. Let me feel that in
all the future you will try to live nobly for my sake.”

The last words had been spoken with an evident effort, and it seemed to
Helen that the cheek against which her own rested was already colder
than it was half an hour ago.

She clung closer to the poor wasted form that was her whole world of
love, and closed her lips over the bitter cry that was rising to them;
and so the two lay, very, very quietly in that last embrace they were
ever to know.

And the twilight gathered round them, and at last a young moon, hanging
low in the western sky, looked in and touched with its pale glory the
pale faces on the pillow.

The mother stirred a little, and with a last effort clasped her child
closer, and said, in a voice like a sigh, faint and sweet and strange,
“Good-by, darling!” and then she seemed to sleep.

Perhaps Helen slept, also. She never quite knew; but it was an hour
afterwards when Woods touched her shoulder, and said, with a kind
firmness in her tone,--

“You _must_ get up now, Miss Helen, and leave her to me. She went off
just as quiet as a lamb, poor dear, and if ever a face was peaceful and
happy, hers is now.”

No one knew what the few days that followed were to Helen Ash. She shut
her lips, as her manner was, over her grief. She turned away, with her
great tearless eyes, from the two graves where her father and mother
lay side by side, and she helped, with a strange unnatural calmness, in
all the preparations for the long journey she was to take.

When at last she reached her aunt’s home in Boston, this strained,
unnatural composure gave way a little.

Her Aunt Helen looked so much like her mother that at first she thought
she could _not_ bear it. Then, when her aunt’s arms closed round her
almost as tenderly as her mother’s would have done, she shivered
a little, and burst into one wild passion of tears, which almost
instantly she checked.

“I am to love you for _her_ sake,” she said. “Those were almost her
last words; and indeed, indeed, I will try, but I think I left my heart
all those miles away in her grave.”

Mrs. Mason was, as her sister had said, a wise and good woman,--wise
enough not to attempt to force the love or the interest of her niece.
She contented herself with being exquisitely gentle and considerate
towards her, and with trying, in countless little ways, to make her
feel that she was at home.

Laura Mason had looked forward to Helen’s coming with a feeling that at
last she was to find in her the sister she had longed for all her life,
but Helen’s cold and self-contained manner disappointed her. She felt
the atmosphere of Helen’s reserve almost as tangibly as if her orphan
cousin had pushed her away.

The summer months passed, and scarcely brought them any nearer
together. Try as Helen might, she could not get over the sting of pain
when she saw this other girl happy in her mother’s love, or running
gayly to meet her father when he came home at night. _They_ had each
other, she used to say to herself, but _she_ had only her dead. She had
not even Woods to speak to, for Mrs. Mason had decided not to retain
her; and since there was no one to whom Helen ever spoke of the past,
she pondered it all the more in her heart.

Things were a little better when school commenced in the autumn. Helen
and Laura were in the same classes, and that brought them somewhat
more together; still there was no real intimacy between them.

In the spring there was to be a competitive examination, and a medal
was to be bestowed on the leading scholar in the class. By midwinter
it was quite evident that Helen and Laura led all the rest, and a real
spirit of rivalry grew up between the cousins which bade fair to become
a passion.

Mrs. Mason looked on regretfully, adhering to her difficult policy of
non-interference. One day Helen heard Laura say to her mother,--

“Mamsie, dear, you know you have the key to that French method locked
up in your desk, for you taught us from it last summer. Won’t you be a
dear, and lend it to me for a little while?

“If I only could have that to help me, I should be sure of success.
I would study just as hard. It would only be the difference between
knowing when one was right, and floundering on in an awful uncertainty.”

Helen was behind the curtain of the library window, and evidently they
did not know of her presence. She waited for her aunt’s answer. If
Laura had the key, then, indeed, she would be sure of success.

Mrs. Mason spoke in a sad voice, with a subtile little thrill of
reproach in it.

“I did not think you would so much as wish, my dear, to do any thing
that was not quite open and straightforward. You know Mademoiselle does
not expect you to see the key. The very test of your power is that you
should work without its aid, and the examination will prove how far you
have succeeded.”

“I suppose there’s no use in coaxing, when you say that. I do wish you
weren’t such an uncoaxable mamma.”

“No, you don’t,--you only fancy that you wish it; but, in your inmost
soul, you would rather have me as I am,” Mrs. Mason answered; and Helen
heard the sound of a kiss, and felt, for the thousandth time, how
bitter it was that this other girl should have home and mother, while
she had only a far-off grave.

But, at least, she would triumph in this school contest! If Laura came
off best there, it would be more than she _could_ bear.

The weeks passed on, and the spring came. The deep old garden back
of the house--the garden Helen’s mother had played in when she was a
child--grew full of bird-songs and blossoms.

There was a sweet laughter on the face of nature. The springs bubbled
with it; the flowers opened to the light; the sunshine poured down its
tender warmth, and the soft coo and call of the birds gave voice to the
general joy.

But both Laura and Helen were too eager and too tired to be gay. They
only studied. They went to sleep with books under their pillows; they
woke with the first light, and began to study again.

It was the very week of the examination, at last. Helen felt satisfied
with herself in all but her French. If _she_ could only have that key
for one little half-hour, she knew she would have no weak spot in her
armor.

She brooded over the idea until the temptation possessed her like an
evil fate. In her passionate girl’s heart she said to herself that she
wanted to _die_ if Laura triumphed over her at school. Laura had every
thing else; why _should_ she have that, also?

She had said at first, “If only it were _right_ to have the key!” Then
she said, “if only she could _chance_ on the key, somehow!” Then, “if
only she could get at her aunt’s desk and _find_ the key!” At last it
was,--

“I _will_ get at the key, somehow!”

This last was the very morning before the examination. She rose from
her bed in the dainty blue-hung room her aunt had taken such pains to
make pretty for her, and went softly downstairs, in the young spring
morning.

Her bare feet made no sound on the thick stair-carpet. She looked like
a little white-clad ghost that had forgotten to flee away at the first
cock-crowing, as an orthodox ghost ought; but no ghost ever had such
glowing cheeks, crimson with excitement, such great wide-opened gray
eyes with green depths in them.

She held in her hand a large bunch of keys belonging to her mother. It
was just a chance whether one of them would fit her aunt’s desk.

She fairly trembled with excitement. She had lost all thought of the
wrong she was doing--of the shame and meanness of this act, which must
be done in silence and mystery; she thought only of the triumph which
success would mean.

She stood before the desk, and tried key after key with her shaking
fingers.

At last one fitted. In a moment more the key to the French method was
in her hand.

In desperate haste she compared her own work with it, and made
corrections here and there.

She was so absorbed that she quite failed to see another white-clad
figure which had followed her noiselessly down the stairs, and stood in
the doorway long enough to see what she was doing, and then went away.

Hurriedly Helen went through her evil task, and then stole back to bed,
with her glittering eyes and burning cheeks.

Meantime Laura had gone, full of excitement, to her mother. Mr. Mason
was away on business, and Laura crept into the empty half of her
mother’s great bed.

“Mamsie,” she said, “wake up quickly, and listen.”

Patient Mrs. Mason rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and turned over.
Then followed Laura’s breathless story.

“Of course she’ll win, now,” Laura said, in conclusion, “unless I tell
Mademoiselle what she has done; and I suppose you wouldn’t like that,
would you, mamsie?

“But it was her French that was the shakiest of any thing. Oh, _did_
you ever see any thing quite so mean? Think of getting into your desk
with her keys, and then slying off all those corrections!”

“Yes, I _do_ think,” Mrs. Mason answered, with almost a groan.

“And she is Laura’s child--my poor Laura, who was honor and honesty
itself!

“You don’t know, dear, what a bitter thing this is to me. Poor Laura!
what if she knows?”

“But what shall we do, mamsie, dear? Are we just to keep still, and let
her win the medal, and let every one think she has beaten fairly, or
will you tell her what we know?”

“Will you go away now,” Mrs. Mason said, “and come back again before
breakfast? I don’t want to say any thing until I am quite sure what it
is best to do.”

When Laura came again, Mrs. Mason had settled upon her course of
action, or rather of inaction.

“Don’t be vexed, girlie,” she said to Laura; “I know it will seem hard
to you to be beaten unfairly; but there are things of more consequence
even than that. The thing that seems to me most important, just now,
is to know what Helen’s character really is. If she is not utterly
unworthy of her mother, she will repent before the thing comes to an
end. If she does not, it will be time enough to think what to do next.”

“And I must let her beat unfairly, and never say one word?” Laura
asked, with a little strain of rebellion in her voice.

“Yes, if you are the obedient and generous Laura I like to believe
you.”

“Mamsie, you have a flattering tongue, and you always get your way.”

“And who is pretty sure always to admit, in the end, that it was the
best way?” asked Mrs. Mason, laughing.

“Mamsie, you are getting spoiled. See if I say yours was the best way
this time!”

French came on the first of the two examination-days. Laura and Helen
led their class. Laura did very well, but Helen acquitted herself
triumphantly, and sat down amid a little buzz of congratulations and
praises.

But somehow the triumph left a bitter taste in her mouth. She did not
look at Laura, and even if she had she would not have understood the
scorn on Laura’s face, since she was quite unaware that her raid on her
aunt’s desk had been observed.

Still she was not happy. She needed no scorn from outside, she had
already begun to feel such bitterness of self-contempt scorching her
soul. It seemed to her that up to this moment she had been as one under
an evil spell.

She had thought of no single thing except her triumph over her
cousin--quite careless as to the means to this hotly desired end. Now
she began to realize how base those means had been, and to long to
exchange her success for any direst possible failure.

Mrs. Mason was watching her, and when they started to go home, she
found an instant in which to whisper to Laura,--

“Be gentle to her, girlie; she will suffer enough to-night.”

At supper Helen’s place was vacant. She sent word that her head ached
too much to come.

Her aunt despatched to her room tea and strawberries and
bread-and-butter enough for the hungriest of girls, and then left her
to herself.

The poor, lonesome, miserable girl lay upon her bed and thought. It was
not quite a year since she had lain in her mother’s arms and heard her
say,--

“Try to live nobly for my sake.”

Those had been almost her mother’s last words; after them there was
only the low sigh, faint as if it came already from far-off worlds,--

“Good-by, darling.”

The low sun-rays stole in softly, and touched her sad, pale face, and
then went away; and after a while some cold, far-off stars looked down
into the window, and saw the girl lying there still, fighting her
battle with herself.

One thing her conscience told her,--that she must undo this wrong, at
whatever cost of shame.

Once she started up, half-resolved to go to her aunt and tell her the
whole story, and seek her help and counsel. But she lay down again,
without the courage to confess her shame.

Through the long night she scarcely slept; but before morning she
had resolved what to do. In public she had taken the wages of her
sin; in public she would make atonement, and eat the bitter bread of
humiliation.

When she had once settled on her course of action, sleep touched her
weary eyes, and soothed her into a forgetfulness from which only the
breakfast-bell awoke her.

That day every one noticed a singular calmness and resolve in her
manner. She passed the remaining examinations with thorough success,
yet with an evident lack of interest in their result which all save her
aunt were at a loss to understand.

At last the time came for the awarding of the medal. There was a little
consultation among the examining committee, and then their chairman
rose, with the medal in his hand.

“To Miss Helen Ash,” he began; but before he could proceed farther,
Miss Helen Ash herself interrupted him.

Her face was as white as the dress she wore, and her eyes glittered
with some strange fire of resolve or courage; but her voice was
absolutely without a quiver of emotion in it, as steady and even as if
she were beyond hope or fear.

“The medal does not belong to me,” she said. “My success was a
false success. I dishonestly found the key to the French method,
and corrected my mistakes by it, or I should have failed. The prize
belongs, of right, to my cousin, Laura Mason.”

The chairman was a fussy little man, and was thoroughly discomposed
by this interruption. He had had his little speech all ready, but it
began with the name of Helen Ash, and he found it difficult to change
it at a moment’s notice.

“Bless my heart!” he said quite unconsciously, and looking helplessly
around him, he repeated, “_Bless_ my heart!”

“Miss Laura Mason,” suggested one of his brethren on the committee; and
thus reinforced, he began again,--

“Miss Laura Mason, I am very sorry--I mean I am very glad, to bestow on
you this medal, which you have fairly earned by your success.”

And then he sat down, and his confusion was covered by a gentle little
clapping of hands.

That night Mrs. Mason went to Helen in her own room, when the twilight
shadows were falling, and as she entered the door she said, “My
darling,” in a voice so like Helen’s mother’s that the girl’s very
heart sprang to meet it.

“My darling, I know now that you are true enough and brave enough to be
my sister’s child.”

But Helen shrank back into the darkness, and this time the voice was
broken with tears which faltered,--

“Is there any one who could know what I have done, and yet not despise
me?”

“There is no one, dear, who dares to scorn the soul that repents and
atones.”

And then loving arms held the poor lonesome girl close, and she knew
that she was no longer alone. She had found a new home--the home her
mother bade her seek--in the heart of that mother’s sister.




THE SURGEON OF THE DOLLS’ HOSPITAL.


It was nearly four years ago that I first noticed, in one of the quiet
side-streets in the West Central district of London, a sign over a door
on which I read:--

DOLLS’ HOSPITAL.

Operations from 9 A.M., to 4 P.M.

Whenever I passed through the street--and that was often, for it was a
short cut to Mudie’s,--the largest circulating library in the world,--I
used to notice this quaint sign, and wonder, laughingly, who was the
superintending physician to this place of healing for the numerous race
of dolls.

I often thought I would go in and see the establishment; but one is
always busy in London, so, very likely, I should never have entered its
door but for a casualty at my own fireside.

When I went downstairs one morning, I heard a sound of weeping, as
bitter as that of Rachel of old mourning for her children. The mourner
in this case was Mistress Brown-Eyes, as I was wont to call my friend’s
little girl.

She was a pretty child, this little Milicent; but you forgot to think
about the rest of her face when you saw her wonderful eyes--soft and
clear, yet bright, and of the warmest, deepest, yet softest brown.
She had made her home in my heart, and so her grief, whatever it was,
appealed at once to my sympathies.

“My darling,” I said, as I tried to draw away the little hands from
before the sorrowful face, “what can be the matter?”

“Bella is dead!” and the sobs recommenced with fresh violence.

Bella was the best-beloved of a somewhat large family of dolls,--a
pretty Parian creature, with blue eyes and fair hair. I had myself
lately assisted in making a trunk of clothes for Bella; and I grudged
sorely all my wasted labor, if she had come to an untimely end.

I looked at the dear remains, stretched out sadly upon a chair. Bella
was evidently very dead indeed. Her pretty neck was broken, her fair,
foolish head lay quite severed from her silken-clad body. Suddenly
there flashed into my mind the thought of the dolls’ hospital. I spoke
cheerfully.

“Brown-Eyes,” I said, “I think that Bella may recover. I am pretty sure
that her collar-bone is broken; but I have heard of people who got well
after breaking their collar-bones.”

The child looked up, her eyes shining through tears, and said, with
that air of grave, old-fashioned propriety which was one of the most
amusing things about her,--

“It is a very serious accident. Do you think Bella _could_ recover?”

“I hope she may; and I shall at once take her to the hospital.”

“The hospital!” cried Mistress Brown-Eyes; “but that is where Mary Ann
went when she had a fever. She was gone six weeks. Will my Bella be
gone six weeks?”

“I think not so long as one week, if she can be cured at all.”

In five minutes more I was in the street, with Bella in a basket on my
arm. Her little mother had covered her carefully from the cold, though
it was already May; and I felt as if I were in a position of grave
responsibility as I hurried to the dolls’ hospital.

A bell rang when I opened the door, and the oddest little person stood
before me. At first I thought it was a child masquerading in long
clothes; for she was not more than half the height of an ordinary woman.

But, looking more closely, I saw the maturity of her face, and realized
that I stood in the presence of a grown-up dwarf, who might really have
been taken for Dickens’s Miss Mowcher, herself.

She was dressed in a long, straight gown of rusty-looking black alpaca,
and her rusty-looking black hair was drawn straightly back from as
plain a face as one often sees. It was a kind, honest face, however,
and I liked the voice in which she asked how she could serve me. I
explained my errand.

“Please to let me see the patient.”

She spoke with as much gravity as if she had been the superintending
physician of the largest hospital in London. I unveiled poor Bella, and
the dwarf lifted her from the basket with grave tenderness.

“Poor little beauty!” she said. “Yes’m, I think I can cure her.”

“Will the operation take long?” I asked, humoring her fancy.

“I should prefer that the patient should not be moved, ma’am, before
to-morrow.”

“Very well; then I will leave her.”

Just at that moment I heard a voice call, “Sally! Sally!”

It was a well-trained, ladylike voice, but somewhat imperious.

“Yes, Lady Jane, I’ll be there in a moment,” answered the dwarf, whom
I now knew to be Sally. Then a door opened, and the most beautiful
creature I ever saw stood in it, looking in.

The hospital was a bare enough place. There was a great table covered
with dolls,--dolls with broken legs, dolls with punched heads, dolls
with one arm gone, hairless dolls, broken-backed dolls, dolls of every
kind, awaiting the ministrations of Sally; and dozens of other dolls
were there, too, whom those skilful fingers had already cured of their
wounds.

There was a shelf, on which was ranged the pharmacy of this
hospital,--white cement, boxes of saw-dust, collections of legs and
arms, wigs, every thing, in short, that an afflicted doll could
possibly require. Then there were two or three wooden stools, and these
completed the furniture of the apartment.

Standing in the doorway, Lady Jane looked as if she were a larger doll
than the rest,--a doll with a soul. She seemed a lady’s child, every
pretty inch of her. I should think she was about twelve years old. She
wore a blue dress, and a blue ribbon in the bright, fair hair that hung
all about her soft, pink-and-white face, out of which looked two great,
serious, inquiring blue eyes.

“I will be through soon, Lady Jane,” Sally said quietly; and the girl
turned away, but not before I had taken in a complete picture of her
loveliness, and had noticed also a somewhat singular ornament she wore,
attached to a slender golden chain. It was so strange a vision to see
in this humble little shop that my curiosity got the better of me, and,
after the door had closed on Lady Jane, I asked, “Does she live here?”

“Yes’m,” answered Sally proudly. “In a way, she is my child.”

I hesitated to inquire further; but I think my eyes must have asked
some questions in spite of myself; for Sally said, after a moment,--

“You seem interested, ma’am, and I don’t mind telling you about her.
I saw Lady Jane first some eight years ago. A man had her who used to
go round with a hand-organ. She was such a pretty little creature that
everybody gave her money, and she was a great profit to Jacopo, for
that was his name.

“It used to make my heart ache to see the little beauty trudging round
all day on her patient feet. When Jacopo spoke to her, I’ve seen her
turn pale; and she never used to smile except when she was holding out
her bit of a hat to people for money. She _had_ to smile then; it was
part of the business.

“I was sixteen, and I was all alone in the world. I had a room to
myself, and I worked days in a toy-shop. I used to dress the dolls,
and I got very clever at mending them; but I hadn’t thought of the
hospital, then.

“I lived in the same street with Jacopo, and I grew very fond of the
little lady, as the people in the street used to call Jane. Sometimes I
coaxed Jacopo to let her stay with me at night; but after three or four
times, he would not let her come again. I suppose he thought she would
get too fond of me.

“Things went on that way for two years; then one night, in the middle
of the night, a boy came for me, and said Jacopo was dying and wanted
me to come. I knew it was something about Jane, and I hurried on my
clothes and went.

“The child was asleep in one corner. She had been tramping all that
day, as usual, and she was too tired out for the noise in the room to
wake her. Jacopo looked very ill, and he could hardly summon strength
to speak to me.

“‘The end has come sudden, Sally,’ he said, ‘the end to a bad life. But
I ain’t bad enough to want harm to happen to the little one when I am
gone. There will be plenty of folks after her, for she’s a profitable
little one to have; but if you want her, I’ll give her to you. You may
take her away to-night, if you will.’

“‘Indeed I will,’ I cried, ‘and thank you. While I can work, she shall
never want.’

“Jacopo had been fumbling under his pillow as he spoke; and when I said
I would take the child he handed me a curious locket. Maybe you noticed
it at her neck when she stood in the door?

“He said, as nearly as I could understand, for it was getting hard work
for him to speak, that he had stolen the child, but he had always kept
this thing, which she had on her neck when he took her, and perhaps it
would help, some day, to find her people.

“So I took her home. The next morning I heard that Jacopo was dead,
and the Lady Jane has been mine ever since.”

“Have you always called her Lady Jane?” I asked.

“Yes’m. There is a coronet on that locket she wears; and I know she
must be some great person’s daughter, she is so beautiful, and seems so
much like a real lady.”

“And so you’ve struggled on and worked for her, and taken care of her
for six years, now?”

“Yes’m, and I’ve thanked God every day that I’ve had her to take care
of. You see, ma’am, I’m not like other people; and it was a good
fortune I couldn’t look for to have a beautiful child like that given
into my arms, as you might say. It was all the difference between being
alone and with no one to care for, and having a home and an interest in
life like other women.

“I gave up working in the shop when I took her, for I didn’t like to
leave her alone. I was a good workwoman, and they let me take work home
for awhile; then I opened the hospital, and I’ve done very well. Lady
Jane has been to school, and I don’t think if her true parents met
her, they would be ashamed of her.”

“Do you ever think,” I said, “that they may meet her some time, and
then you would lose her for ever?”

“Yes, indeed, I think about that, ma’am; and I make her keep the locket
in sight all the time, in hopes it might lead to something.”

“In hopes!” I said, surprised. “You don’t want to part with her, do
you?”

I was sorry, instantly, that I had asked the question, for her poor
face flushed, and the tears gathered in her eyes.

“O ma’am,” she said, “if I stopped to think about myself, I suppose
I should rather die than lose her; but I _don’t_ think of any thing
but her. And how could I want her, a lady born, and beautiful as any
princess, to live always in a little room back of a dolls’ hospital?
Would it be right for me to want it?

“No; I think God gave her to make a few of my years bright; and when
the time comes, she will go away to live her own life, and I shall
live out mine, remembering that she _was_ here, once; and harking back
till I can hear the sound of her voice again; or looking till I see her
bright head shine in the corner where she sits now.”

Just then the bell rang, and other customers came into the hospital,
and I went away, promising to return for Bella on the morrow.

I walked through the streets with a sense that I had been talking with
some one nobler than the rest of the world. Another than poor Sally
might have adopted Lady Jane, perhaps, tended her, loved her; but who
else would have been noble enough to love her, and yet be ready to lose
her for ever and live on in darkness quite satisfied if but the little
queen might come to her own again?

I comforted Mistress Brown-Eyes with a promise of her “child’s”
recovery, and I went to a kettle-drum or two in the afternoon, and
dined out at night; but all the time, amidst whatever buzz of talk, I
was comparing the most generous persons I had ever known with the poor
dwarfed surgeon of the dolls’ hospital, and finding them all wanting.

I went for Bella about four the next afternoon. I wanted to get to the
hospital late enough to see something of the little surgeon and her
beautiful ward. I purchased a bunch of roses on the way, for I meant to
please Sally by giving them to Lady Jane.

I opened the door, and again, at the ringing of the bell, the quaint
little figure of the dwarf surgeon started up like Jack-in-the-box.

“Is the patient recovered?” I asked.

“The patient is quite well;” and the surgeon took down pretty Bella,
and proudly exhibited her. The white cement had done its work so
perfectly that the slender neck showed no signs of ever having been
broken.

I paid the surgeon her modest fee, and then I said, “Here are some
roses I brought for Lady Jane.”

Sally’s plain face beamed with pleasure. “It’s time to stop receiving
patients for to-day,” she said. “Won’t you walk into the sitting-room
and give the roses to Lady Jane, yourself?”

I was well pleased to accept the invitation. The sitting-room was as
cosy as the hospital itself was barren of attraction. I really wondered
at the taste with which it was arranged. The hangings were blue, and
two or three low chairs were covered with the same color; and there
were pretty trifles here and there which made it seem like a lady’s
room.

[Illustration: My roses were received with a cry of delight.--PAGE 69.]

My roses were received with a cry of delight; and, while Lady Jane
put them in a delicate glass, Sally made me sit down in the most
comfortable chair, and then she asked her ward to sing to me.

The girl had a wonderful voice, soft and clear and full.

When she had done singing, Sally said, “I have thought sometimes that,
if no better fortune comes, Lady Jane can sing herself into good luck.”

“_I_ count on something better than that,” the little lady cried
carelessly. “When I ‘come to my own,’ like the princesses in all the
fairy tales, I’ll send you my picture, Sally, and it will make you
less trouble than I do. It won’t wear out its gowns, nor want all the
strawberries for supper.”

Sally didn’t answer; but two great tears gathered in her eyes, and
rolled down her cheeks.

Lady Jane laughed--not unkindly, only childishly--and said, “Never
mind. Don’t cry yet. You’ll have time enough for that when it all comes
to pass. And you know you want it to happen; you always say so.”

“Yes, yes, dear, I want it to happen,” Sally said hastily; “I couldn’t
want to shut you up here for ever, like a flower growing in a dungeon.”

“A pretty, blue-hung dungeon, with nice soft chairs,” Lady Jane said
pleasantly; and then I got up to go.

Had this beautiful girl any real heart behind her beauty? I wondered.
If the time ever came when Sally must give her up to some brighter
fate, would it cost the little lady herself one pang? Could she be
wholly insensible to all the devotion that had been lavished on her for
all these years? I could not tell; but she seemed to me too light a
thing for deep loving.

I carried Bella home to Mistress Brown-Eyes, who received her with
great joy, and with a certain tender respect, such as we give to those
who have passed through perils. I stayed in London till “the season”
was over,--that is to say, till the end of July; and then, with the
last rose of summer in my buttonhole, I went over to the fair sea coast
of France.

It was not until the next May that I found myself in London again; and
going to renew my subscription at Mudie’s, passed the dolls’ hospital.
I looked up at the quaint sign, and the fancy seized me to go in.

I opened the door, and promptly as ever, the dwarf surgeon of the dolls
stood before me. It was nearly four o’clock, and the hospital was empty
of customers. Nothing in it was changed except the face of the surgeon.
Out of that always plain face a certain cheerful light had faded. It
looked now like a face accustomed to tears. I said,--

“Do you remember me, Dr. Sally?”

A sort of frozen smile came to the poor trembling lips.

“Oh, yes’m. You’re the lady that brought the rose-buds to Lady Jane.”

“And is she well?” I asked.

“I _think_ so, ma’am. Heaven knows I _hope_ so; but the old days when
I _knew_ are over. Won’t you come into the sitting-room, please?”

I wanted nothing better for myself, and I felt that it might ease her
sad heart to break its silence; so I followed her into the familiar
room. It, at least, was unchanged. The blue hangings were there, and
the low easy-chairs, and the pretty trifles; and yet, somehow, the room
seemed cold, for the beauty which had gladdened it last year had gone
for ever.

“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked; and I know the real sympathy
I felt must have sounded in my voice.

“It wasn’t long after you were here,” she said, “a lady was driving by,
and she saw my sign. She sent her footman to the door to see if the
place was really what that said; and the next day she came in herself
and brought a whole load of broken toys. She said she wanted these
things put in order to take into the country, for they were favorite
playthings of her little girl’s.

“I turned then and looked at the child who had come in with her mother.
I can never tell you how I felt. It was as though Lady Jane had gone
back six years. Just what my darling was when she came to me, this
little girl was now,--the very same blue eyes, and bright, fair hair,
and the pretty, pink-and-white face.

“Just at that moment, Lady Jane came into the hospital, and when the
lady saw her, she stood and gazed as if she had seen a ghost. I looked
at the lady herself, and then I looked at Lady Jane, and then again
at the little girl; and true as you live, ma’am, I knew it was Lady
Jane’s mother and sister before ever a word was spoken. I felt my knees
shaking under me, and I held fast to the counter to keep from falling.
I couldn’t have spoken first, if my life had depended on it.

“The lady looked, for what seemed to me a long time; and then she
walked up to my darling and touched the locket that she wore on her
neck. At last she turned to me and asked, with a little sternness in
her gentle voice, if I would tell her who this girl was, and how I came
by her.

“So I told her the whole story, just as I had told it to you, and
before I had finished, she was crying as if her heart would break.
Down she went on her knees beside Lady Jane, and put her arms around
her, and cried,--

“‘O my darling, my love, I thought you were dead! I am your mother--oh,
believe me, my darling! Love me a little, a little,--after all these
years!’

“And just as properly as if she had gone through it all in her mind a
hundred times beforehand, Lady Jane answered,--

“‘I always expected you, mamma.’

“Somehow, the lady looked astonished. She grew quieter, and stood up,
holding Lady Jane’s hand.

“‘You expected me?’ she said, inquiringly.

“‘Yes, you know I _knew_ I had been stolen; and I used to think and
think, and fancy how my true mother would look, and what my right home
would be; and I always felt sure in my heart that you would come some
day. I didn’t know when or how it would be; but I expected you.’

“‘And when will you be ready to go with me?’ asked the mother.

“‘When you please, mamma.’

“The lady hesitated, and turned to me. ‘I owe you so much,’ she said,
‘so much that I can never hope to pay it; and I do not like to grieve
you. But her father and I have been without Jane so long, _could_ you
spare her to me at once?’

“‘That must be as you and she say, ma’am,’ I answered, trying as hard
as I could to speak quietly. ‘I never have wanted any thing but that
she should be well off and happy so far, and won’t begin to stand in
her light now.’

“Then the lady turned to the little girl who had come in with her.
‘Ethel,’ she said, ‘this is your sister. She has been lost to us eight
years, but we will keep her always, now.’ And then, with more thanks
to me, she started to go away,--the stately, beautiful lady, with her
beautiful girls, one on each side of her.

“They got to the door, and suddenly my darling turned,--O ma’am, it’s
the best thing in my whole life to remember that! Of her own accord she
turned and came back to me, and said she,--

“‘Don’t think, Sally, that I’m not sorry to say good-by. Of course I
can’t be sorry to find my own mamma and my right home, but I’m sorry to
leave _you_.’

“And then she put her arms round my neck and kissed me just as she had
done when I took her home that night from Jacopo’s, six years before;
and then she went away, and the sunshine, it seemed to me, went out of
the door with her, and has never come back since.”

The poor little surgeon of the dolls stopped speaking, and cried very
quietly, as those cry who are not used to have their tears wiped away,
or their sorrows comforted.

I wanted to say that Lady Jane seemed to me a heartless little piece,
who cared for nothing in the world but herself, and wasn’t worth
grieving for; but I felt there would be no comfort for her in thinking
that there had never been any thing worth having in her life. Far
better let her go on believing that for six years she had sheltered an
angel at her fireside.

At last, when I saw her tears were ceasing to flow, I said, “And when
did you see her again?”

“Oh, I have never seen her since that day. I think she pitied me too
much to come back and give me the sorrow of parting with her over
again. No, I have never seen her, but her mother sent me five hundred
pounds.”

“And so she ought,” I said impulsively. “It was little enough for all
you had done.”

Surgeon Sally looked at me with wonder, not unmixed with reproach, in
her eyes.

“Do you think I wanted _that_?” she asked. “I had had my pay for all I
did, ten times over, in just having her here to look at and to love.
No; I sent the money back, and I think it must be that my darling
understood; for, two months afterwards, I received the only gift I
would have cared to have,--her portrait. Will you please to look round,
ma’am? It hangs behind you.”

I looked round, and there she was, even lovelier than when I had seen
her first,--a bright, smiling creature, silken-clad, patrician to the
finger-tips. But it seemed to me that no heart of love looked out of
the fair, careless face. I thought I would rather be Surgeon Sally,
and know the sweetness of loving another better than myself.

“She is very beautiful,” I said, as I turned away.

“Yes; and sometimes I almost think I feel her lips, her bonny bright
lips, touch my face, as they did that last day, and hear her say,
‘Don’t think, Sally, that I’m not sorry.’ Oh, my lot isn’t hard, ma’am.
I might have lived my life through and never have known what it was to
have something all my own to love. God was good.

“And after all, ma’am,” she added cheerfully, “there’s nothing happier
in the world than to give all the pleasure you can to somebody.”

And I went away, feeling that the dwarf surgeon of the dolls’ hospital
had learned the true secret of life.




PRETTY MISS KATE.


Everybody called her “pretty Miss Kate.” It was an odd title, and she
had come by it in an odd way. A sort of half-witted nurse, whose one
supreme merit was her faithfulness, had tended Squire Oswald’s baby
daughter all through her early years; and she it was who had first
called the girl “pretty Miss Kate.”

It was a small neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else; and,
by dint of much hearing this title, all the neighbors grew to use it.
And, indeed, at fifteen Kate Oswald deserved it. She was a tall, slight
girl, with a figure very graceful, and what people call stylish.

She had blue eyes; not the meaningless blue of a French doll, but deep
and lustrous, like the tender hue of the summer sky. She had hair like
some Northland princess. It had not a tint of yellow in it, but it
was fine and fair, and so light as to be noticeable anywhere. Her skin
was exquisite, too, as skin needs must be to match such hair. When any
color came to the cheeks it was never crimson, but just the faintest
tint of the blush rose; her lips alone were of rich, vivid bloom. A
prettier creature, truly, seldom crosses this planet; and the few such
girls who have lived among us, and grown to womanhood, have made wild
work generally, using hearts for playthings; and, like other children,
breaking their toys now and then. But pretty Miss Kate was not at the
age yet for that sort of pastime, and her most ardent worshipper was
little Sally Green.

There was a curious friendship between these two, if one may call that
friendship which is made up of blind worship on one side and gentle
pity and kindliness on the other.

Squire Oswald owned the poor little house where Widow Green lived, and
whenever there was an unusual press of work at the great house above,
the family washing used to be sent down to Mrs. Green at the foot of
the hill. Many an hour the widow worked busily, fluting the delicate
ruffles and smoothing the soft muslins, out of which pretty Miss Kate
used to bloom as a flower does out of its calyx. And on these occasions
Sally used to carry the dainty washing home, and she nearly always
contrived to be permitted to take it up to Miss Kate’s room, herself.

Nobody thought much about little Sally Green any way,--least of all did
any one suspect her of any romantic or heroic or poetical qualities.
And yet she had them all; and if you came to a question of soul and
mind, there was something in Sally which entitled her to rank with
the best. She was a plain, dark little thing, with a stubbed, solid,
squarely-built figure; with great black eyes, which nobody thought any
thing about in _her_, but which would have been enough for the whole
stock-in-trade of a fashionable belle; with masses of black hair that
she did not know what to do with; and with a skin somewhat sallow, but
smooth. No one ever thought how she looked, except, perhaps, pretty
Miss Kate.

One day, when the child brought home the washing, Kate had been reading
aloud to a friend, and Sally had shown an evident inclination to
linger. At that time Kate was not more than fourteen, and the interest
or the admiration in Sally’s face struck her, and, moved by a girl’s
quick impulse, she had said,--

“Do you want to hear all of it, Sally? Wait, then, and I will read it
to you.”

The poem was Mrs. Browning’s “Romance of the Swan’s Nest,” and it was
the first glimpse for Sally Green into the enchanted land of poetry
and fiction. Before that she had admired pretty Miss Kate, but now the
feeling grew to worship.

Kate was not slow to perceive it, with that feminine instinct which
somehow scents out and delights in the honest admiration of high or
low, rich or poor. She grew very kind to little Sally. Many a book and
magazine she lent the child; and now and then she gave her a flower, a
bit of bright ribbon, or some little picture. To poor Sally Green these
trifles were as the gifts of a goddess, and no devotee ever treasured
relics from the shrine of his patron saint more tenderly than she
cherished any, even the slightest, token which was associated with the
beautiful young lady whom she adored with all her faithful, reverent,
imaginative heart.

One June evening Sally had been working hard all day. She had washed
dishes, run her mother’s errands, got supper, and now her reward was to
come.

“You may make yourself tidy,” her mother said, “and carry home that
basket of Miss Kate’s things to Squire Oswald’s.”

Sally flew upstairs, and brushed back her black locks, and tied them
with a red ribbon Miss Kate had given her. She put on a clean dress,
and a little straw hat that last year had been Miss Kate’s own; and
really for such a stubbed, dark little thing, she looked very nicely.
She was thirteen--two years younger than her idol--and while Miss Kate
was tall, and looked older than her years, Sally looked even younger
than she was. Her heart beat as she hurried up the hill. She thought
of the fable of the mouse and the lion, which she had read in one of
the books Miss Kate had lent her. It made her think of herself and her
idol. Not that Miss Kate was like a lion at all,--no, she was like a
beautiful princess,--but she herself was such a poor, humble, helpless
little mouse; and yet there might be a time, if she only watched and
waited, when she, even she, could do pretty Miss Kate some good. And
if the time ever came, wouldn’t she _do_ it, just, at no matter _what_
cost to herself? Poor little Sally! The time was on its way, and nearer
than she thought.

She found Miss Kate in her own pretty room,--a room all blue and white
and silver, as befitted such a fair-haired beauty. The bedstead and
wardrobe were of polished chestnut, lightly and gracefully carved.
The carpet was pale gray, with impossible blue roses. The blue chintz
curtains were looped back with silver cords; there were silver frames,
with narrow blue edges, to the few graceful pictures; and on the mantel
were a clock and vases with silver ornaments.

Pretty Miss Kate looked as if she had been dressed on purpose to stay
in that room. She wore a blue dress, and round her neck was a silver
necklace which her father had brought her last year from far-off Genoa.
Silver ornaments were in her little ears, and a silver clasp fastened
the belt at her waist. She welcomed Sally with a sweet graciousness, a
little conscious, perhaps, of the fact that she was Miss Oswald, and
Sally was Sally Green; but to the child her manner, like every thing
else about her, seemed perfection.

“Sit down and stay a little, Sally,” she said, “I have something to
tell you. Do you remember what you heard me read that first time, when
your eyes got so big with listening, and I made you stay and hear it
all?”

“Yes, indeed,” Sally cried eagerly. “I never forgot any thing I ever
heard you read. That first time it was ‘The Romance of the Swan’s
Nest.’”

“Yes, you are right, and I know I was surprised to find how much you
cared about it. I began to be interested in you then, for you know I am
interested in you, don’t you, Sally?”

Sally blushed with pleasure till her face glowed like the June roses in
Miss Kate’s silver vases, but she did not know what to say, and so,
very wisely, she did not say any thing. Miss Kate went on,--

“Well, that very same poem I am going to read, next Wednesday night,
at the evening exercises in the academy. The academy hall won’t hold
everybody, and so they are going to be admitted by tickets. Each of
us girls has a certain number to give away, and I have one for you.
I thought you would like to go and see me there among the rest in my
white gown, and hear me read the old verses again.”

You would not have believed so small a thing could so have moved
anybody; but Sally’s face turned from red to white, and from white to
red again, and her big black eyes were as full of tears as an April
cloud is of rain-drops.

“Do you mean it, truly?” she asked.

“Yes, truly, child. Here is your ticket. Why, don’t cry, foolish girl.
It’s nothing. I wanted to be sure of one person there who would think
I read well, whether any one else did or not. And I’ve a gown for you,
too--that pink muslin, don’t you know, that I wore last year? I’ve
shot up right out of it, and it’s of no use to me, now, and mamma said
I might give it to you. This is Saturday; you can get it ready by
Wednesday, can’t you?”

What a happy girl went home that night, just as the rosy June
sunset was fading away, and ran, bright and glad and full of joyful
expectation, into the Widow Green’s humble little house! Widow Green
wasn’t much of a woman, in the neighbors’ estimation. She was honest
and civil, and she washed well; but that was all they saw in her. Sally
saw much more. She saw a mother who always tried to make her happy;
who shared her enthusiasms, or at least sympathized with them; who was
never cross or jealous, or any thing but motherly. She was as pleased,
now, at the prospect of Sally’s pleasure as Sally herself was; and just
as proud of this attention from pretty Miss Kate. Together they made
over the pink muslin dress; and when Wednesday night came the widow
felt sure that her daughter was as well worth having, and as much to be
proud of, as any other mother’s daughter that would be at the academy.

“You must go very early,” she said, “to get a good seat; and you need
not be afraid to go right up to the front. You’ve just as good right to
get close up there as anybody.”

When Sally was going out, her mother called her back.

“Here, dear,” she said, “just take the shawl. Do it to please me, for
there’s no knowing how cold it might be when you get out.”

“The shawl” was an immense Rob Roy plaid,--a ridiculous wrap, truly,
for a June night; but summer shawls they had none, and Sally was too
dutiful, as well as too happy, not to want to please her mother even in
such a trifle. How differently two lives would have come out if she had
not taken it!

She was the very first one to enter the academy. Dare she go and sit
in the front row so as to be close to pretty Miss Kate? Ordinarily she
would have shrunk into some far corner, for she was almost painfully
shy; but now something outside herself seemed to urge her on. She
would not take up much room,--this something whispered,--and nobody,
no, nobody at all, could love Miss Kate better than she did. So she
went into the very front row, close up to the little stage on which
the young performers were to appear,--a veritable stage, with real
foot-lights.

Soon the people began to come in, and after a while the lights were
turned up, and the exercises commenced. There were dialogues and music,
and at last the master of ceremonies announced the reading of “The
Romance of the Swan’s Nest,” by Miss Kate Oswald.

Other people had been interested in what went before, no doubt; but
to Sally Green the whole evening had been but a prelude to this one
triumphant moment for which she waited.

Pretty Miss Kate came forward like a little queen,--tall and slight,
with her coronet of fair, braided hair, in which a shy, sweet rosebud
nestled. She wore a dress of white muslin, as light and fleecy as a
summer cloud, with a sash that might, as far as its hue went, have
been cut from the deep blue sky over which that summer cloud floated.
A little bunch of flowers was on her bosom, and other ornament she had
none. She looked like one of the pretty creatures, half angel and half
woman of fashion, which some of the modern French artists paint.

As she stepped forward she was greeted with a burst of irrepressible
applause, and then the house was very still as she began to read. How
her soft eyes glowed, and the blushes burned on her dainty cheeks, when
she came to the lines:--

      “Little Ellie in her smile
    Chooseth: ‘I will have a lover,
      Riding on a steed of steeds!
      He shall love me without guile,
    And to _him_ I will discover
      That swan’s nest among the reeds.

      “‘And the steed shall be red-roan,
    And the lover shall be noble,
      With an eye that takes the breath,
      And the lute he plays upon
    Shall strike ladies into trouble,
      As his sword strikes men to death.’”

She had the whole audience for her lovers before she was through with
the poem, and the last verse was followed with a perfect storm of
applause. Was she not young and beautiful, with a voice as sweet as her
smile? And then she was Squire Oswald’s daughter, and he was the great
man of the village.

She stepped off the stage; and then the applause recalled her, and she
came back, pink with pleasure. A bow, a smile, and then a step too near
the poorly protected foot-lights, and the fleecy white muslin dress was
a sheet of flame.

How Sally Green sprang over those foot-lights she never knew; but there
she was, on the stage, and “the shawl” was wrapped round pretty Miss
Kate before any one else had done any thing but scream. Close, close,
close, Sally hugged its heavy woollen folds. She burned her own fingers
to the bone; but what cared she? The time of the poor little mouse had
come at last.

And so pretty Miss Kate was saved, and not so much as a scar marred the
pink and white of her fair girl’s face. Her arms were burned rather
badly, but they would heal, and no permanent harm had come to her.

Sally was burned much more severely, but she hardly felt the pain of it
in her joy that she had saved her idol, for whom she would have been so
willing even to die. They took her home very tenderly, and the first
words she said, as they led her inside her mother’s door, were,--

“Now, mother, I know what I took the shawl for!”

I said how differently two lives would have ended if she had not
taken that shawl. Pretty Miss Kate’s would have burned out then and
there, no doubt; for if any one else were there with presence of
mind enough to have saved her, certainly there was no other wrap
there like “the shawl.” And then Sally might have grown up to the
humblest kind of toil, instead of being what she is to-day; for Squire
Oswald’s gratitude for his daughter’s saved life did not exhaust
itself in words. From that moment he charged himself with Sally
Green’s education, and gave her every advantage which his own daughter
received. And, truth to tell, Sally, with her wonderful temperament,
the wealth of poetry and devotion and hero-worship that was in her,
soon outstripped pretty Miss Kate in her progress.

But no rivalry or jealousy ever came between them. As Sally had adored
Kate’s loveliness, so, in time, Kate came to do homage to Sally’s
genius; and the two were friends in the most complete sense of the
word.




A BORROWED ROSEBUD.


There was a pattering footfall on the piazza, and Miss Ellen Harding
went to look out. She saw a little figure standing there, among the
rosebuds,--not one of the neighbors’ children, but a bonny little
lassie, with curls of spun gold, and great, fearless brown eyes, and
cheeks and lips as bright as the red roses on the climbing rosebush
beside her.

A little morsel, not more than five years old, she was; with a white
dress, and a broad scarlet sash, and a hat which she swung in her
fingers by its scarlet strings. She looked so bright and vivid, and she
was such an unexpected vision in that place, that it almost seemed as
if one of the poppies in the yard beyond had turned into a little girl,
and come up the steps.

“Did you want me?” Miss Harding asked, going up to the tiny blossom of
a creature.

“No, if you please.”

“My father, then, Dr. Harding,--were you sent for him?”

The child surveyed her, as if in gentle surprise at so much curiosity.

“No,” she answered, after a moment. “I am Rosebud; and I don’t want
anybody. Jane told me to come here, and she would follow presently.”

She said the words with a singular correctness and propriety, as if
they were a lesson which she had been taught.

“And who is Jane?” Miss Harding asked.

Evidently the process of training had gone no further. The child looked
puzzled and uncomfortable.

“Jane?” she answered hesitatingly. “Why, she is Jane.”

“Not your mamma?”

“No,--just Jane.”

“And what did Jane want here?”

“She told me to come, and she would follow presently,” said the child,
saying her little lesson over again.

Evidently there was nothing more to be got out of her; but Miss Harding
coaxed her to come into the cool parlor, and wait for Jane; and gave
her some strawberries and cream in a gayly painted china saucer, that
all children liked. Rosebud was no exception to the rest. When she had
finished her berries, she tapped on the saucer with her spoon.

“I will have it for mine, while I stay,--may I?” she said. “Not to take
away, but just to call, you know.”

“Surely,” said Miss Harding, more puzzled than ever. Had the sprite,
then, come to stay? Were there, by chance, fairies after all,--and
was this some changeling from out their ranks? She tried to entertain
her small guest; and she found her quite accessible to the charms
of pictures, and contented for an hour with a box of red and white
chessmen. Towards night her curiosity got the better of her courtesy;
and, looking from the window, she inquired,--

“I wonder where your Jane can be?”

“Presently; Jane said presently,” answered the child, with quiet
composure, and returned to the chessmen.

Miss Harding heard her father drive into the yard, and slipped out
to speak to him. She told her story, and the doctor gave a low, soft
whistle. It was a way he had when any thing surprised him.

“It looks to me,” said he, “as if Jane, whoever she may be, intended to
make us a present of Miss Rosebud. Well, we must make the small person
comfortable to-night, and to-morrow we will see what to do with her.”

The small person was easily made comfortable. She ate plenty of
bread-and-milk for her supper, and more strawberries; and when it was
over, she went round and stood beside the doctor.

“I think you are a dood man,” she said, with the quaint gravity which
characterized all her utterances. “I should like to sit with you.”

The doctor lifted her to his knee, and she laid her little golden head
against his coat. There was a soft place under that coat, as many a
sick and poor person in the town knew very well. I think the little
golden head hit the soft place. He stroked the shining curls very
tenderly. Then he asked,--

“What makes you think I’m a ‘dood’ man, Pussy-cat?”

“My name is not Pussy-cat,--I am Rosebud,” she replied gravely; “and I
think you are dood because you look so, out of your eyes.”

The little morsel spoke most of her words with singular clearness and
propriety. It was only when a “g” came in that she substituted a “d”
for it, and went on her way rejoicing.

As the doctor held her, the soft place under his coat grew very soft
indeed. A little girl had been his last legacy from his dying wife; and
she had grown to be about as large as Rosebud, and then had gone home
to her mother. It almost seemed to him as if she had come back again;
and it was her head beneath which his heart was beating. He beckoned to
his daughter.

“Have you some of Aggie’s things?” he asked. “This child must be made
comfortable, and she ought to go to bed soon.”

“No,” the child said; “I’m doing to sit here till the moon comes. That
means ‘do to bed.’”

“Yes, I have them,” Miss Harding answered.

She had loved Aggie so well, that it seemed half sacrilege to put
her dead sister’s garments on this stranger child; and half it was a
pleasure that again she had a little girl to dress and cuddle. She went
out of the room. Soon she came running back, and called her father.

“O, come here! I found this in the hall. It is a great basket full of
all sorts of clothes, and it is marked ‘For Rosebud.’ See,--here is
every thing a child needs.”

The doctor had set the little girl down, but she was still clinging to
his hand.

“I think,” he said, “that Jane has been here, and that she does not
mean to take away our Rosebud.”

But the little one, still clinging to him, said,--

“I think it is not ‘presently’ yet,--Jane wouldn’t come till
‘presently.’”

“Do you love Jane?” the doctor asked, looking down at the flower-like
face.

“Jane is not mamma. She is only Jane,” was the answer.

When the moon rose, the little girl went willingly to bed; and all
night long Miss Ellen Harding held her in her arms, as she used to hold
her little sister, before the angels took her. Since Aggie’s death,
people said Miss Ellen had grown cold and stiff and silent. She felt,
herself, as if she had been frozen; but the ice was melting, as she lay
there, feeling the soft, round little lump of breathing bliss in her
arms; and a tender flower of love was to spring up and bloom in that
heart that had grown hard and cold.

There was no talk of sending Rosebud away, though some people wondered
much at the doctor, and even almost blamed him for keeping this child,
of whom he knew nothing. But he wanted her, and Miss Ellen wanted her;
and, indeed, she was the joy and life and blessing of the long-silent
household.

She was by no means a perfect child. A well-mannered little creature
she was,--some lady had brought her up evidently,--but she was
self-willed and obstinate. When she had said, “I’m doing to do” such
and such a thing, it was hard to move her from her purpose; unless,
indeed, the doctor interposed, and to him she always yielded instantly.
But, just such as she was, they found her altogether charming. The
doctor never came home without something in his pocket to reward her
search; Miss Ellen was her bond-slave; and Mistress Mulloney in the
kitchen was ready to work her hands off for her.

Often, when she had gone to bed, the doctor and Miss Ellen used to talk
over her strange coming.

“We shall lose her some day,” the doctor would say, with a sigh. “No
one ever voluntarily abandoned such a child as that. She is only
trusted to our protection for a little while, and presently we shall
have to give her up.”

“Should you be sorry, father,” Miss Ellen would inquire, “that we had
had her at all?”

And the doctor would answer thoughtfully “No, for she has made me young
again. I will not grumble when the snows come because we have had
summer, and know how bright it is.”

But the child lived with them as if she were going to live with them
for ever. If she had any memories of days before she came there, she
never alluded to them. After the first, she never mentioned Jane,--she
never spoke of a father or mother. But she was happy as the summer days
were long,--a glad, bright, winsome creature as ever was the delight of
any household.

And so the days and the weeks and the months went on, and it was
October. And one day the bell rang, and Mistress Mulloney went to the
door, and in a moment came to the room where Miss Ellen was sitting,
with Rosebud playing beside her, and beckoned to her mistress.

“It’s some one asking for the child,” she said. “Can’t we jist hide her
away? It’ll be hard for the doctor if she’s took.”

“No; we must see who it is, and do what is right,” Miss Ellen answered;
but her lips trembled a little. She went into the hall, and there, at
the door, stood a woman, looking like a nursery-maid of the better sort.

“I have come,” the stranger began; but Rosebud had caught the sound of
her voice, and came on the scene like a flash of light.

“It is ‘presently!’” she cried; “and there, oh, _there_ is mamma!”
And down the path she flew, and into the very arms of a lady who was
waiting at a little distance.

Miss Harding went down the steps. “You have come, I see, to claim our
Rosebud, and she is only too ready to be claimed. I thought we had made
her happy.”

The child caught the slight accent of reproach in Miss Ellen’s voice,
and turned towards her.

“You have been dood, oh, so very, very dood!” she said, “but _this_ is
mamma.”

“I trusted my darling to you in a very strange way,” the lady began,
“but not, believe me, without knowing in whose hands I placed her. I
was in mortal terror, then, lest she should be taken from me, and I
dared not keep her until she had been legally made mine, and mine only.
But you have made me your debtor for life, and I shall try to show it
some day.”

“But, at least, you will come in and wait until my father returns. He
loves Rosebud so dearly, that it would be a cruelty to take her away
until he has had time to bid her good-by.”

“You are right,” the stranger answered courteously. “Jane, go with the
carriage to the hotel, and I will come or send for you when I want you.”

In a few moments more the strange lady was seated in the doctor’s
parlor. Miss Harding saw now where Rosebud had got her bright, wilful
beauty.

“I must explain,” the mother said, as she lifted her child upon her
lap. “I am Mrs. Matthewson. My husband is dead, and Rosebud has a
very, very large fortune of her own. Her uncles, who were to have the
management of her property, by her father’s will, claimed her also;
and I have had such a fight for her! They were unscrupulous men, and
I feared to keep Rosebud with me, lest by some means they should get
some hold on her. So I resolved to lend her to you for the summer;
and, indeed, I never can reward you for all your care of her.”

“You can reward us only by not altogether taking her away from us. We
have learned to love her very dearly.”

And, after a while, the doctor came home and heard all the story.
And it was a week before Mrs. Matthewson had the heart to take away
the child she had lent them. Then it was not long before the doctor
and Miss Ellen had to go to see Rosebud. And then, very soon, Mrs.
Matthewson had to bring her back again; and, really, so much going back
and forth was very troublesome; and they found it more convenient,
after a while, to join their households.

Before Rosebud came, the doctor had thought himself an old man, though
he was only forty-five; but, as he said, Rosebud had made him young
again; and Rosebud’s mamma found it possible to love him very dearly.
But Miss Ellen always said it was Rosebud and nobody else whom her
father married, and that he had been in love with the borrowed blossom
from the first.




TOM’S THANKSGIVING.


“It was very provoking that seamstresses and such people would get
married, like the rest of the world,” Mrs. Greenough said, half in fun
and half in earnest. Her fall sewing was just coming on, and here was
Lizzie Brown, who had suited her so nicely, going off to be married;
and she had no resource but to advertise, and take whomsoever she could
get. No less than ten women had been there that day, and not one would
answer.

“There comes Number Eleven; you will see,” she cried, as the bell rang.

Kitty Greenough looked on with interest. Indeed, it was her gowns,
rather than her mother’s, that were most pressing. She was just
sixteen, and since last winter she had shot up suddenly, as girls at
that age so often do, and left all her clothes behind her.

Mrs. Greenough was right,--it _was_ another seamstress; and Bridget
showed in a plain, sad-looking woman of about forty, with an air of
intense respectability. Mrs. Greenough explained what she wanted done,
and the woman said quietly that she was accustomed to such work,--would
Mrs. Greenough be so kind as to look at some recommendations? Whereupon
she handed out several lady-like looking notes, whose writers indorsed
the bearer, Mrs. Margaret Graham, as faithful and capable, used to
trimmings of all sorts, and quick to catch an idea.

“Very well indeed,” Mrs. Greenough said, as she finished reading them;
“I could ask nothing better. Can you be ready to come at once?”

“To-morrow, if you wish, madam,” was the answer; and then Mrs. Graham
went away.

Kitty Greenough was an impulsive, imaginative girl; no subject was too
dull or too unpromising for her fancy to touch it. She made a story
for herself about every new person who came in her way. After Number
Eleven had gone down the stairs, Kitty laughed.

“Isn’t she a sobersides, mamma? I don’t believe there’ll be any frisk
in my dresses at all if she trims them.”

“There’ll be frisk enough in them if you wear them,” her mother
answered, smiling at the bright, saucy, winsome face of her one tall
daughter.

Kitty was ready to turn the conversation.

“What do you think she is, mamma,--wife or widow?” And then answering
her own question: “I think she’s married, and he’s sick, and she has to
take care of him. That solemn, still way she has comes of much staying
in a sick-room. She’s in the habit of keeping quiet, don’t you see? I
wish she were a little prettier; I think he would get well quicker.”

“There’d be no plain, quiet people in your world if you made one,” her
mother said, smiling; “but you’d make a mistake to leave them out. You
would get tired even of the sun if it shone all the time.”

The next day the new seamstress came, and a thoroughly good one she
proved; “better even than Lizzie,” Mrs. Greenough said, and this was
high praise. She sewed steadily, and never opened her lips except to
ask some question about her work. Even Kitty, who used to boast that
she could make a dumb man talk, had not audacity enough to intrude on
the reserve in which Mrs. Graham intrenched herself.

“_He’s_ worse this morning,” whispered saucy Kitty to her mother; “and
she can do nothing but think about him and mind her gathers.”

But, by the same token, “_he_” must have been worse every day, for
during the two weeks she sewed there Mrs. Graham never spoke of any
thing beyond her work.

When Mrs. Greenough had paid her, the last night, she said,--

“Please give me your address, Mrs. Graham, for I may want to find you
again.”

“17 Hudson Street, ma’am, up two flights of stairs; and if I’m not
there Tom always is.”

“There, didn’t I tell you?” Kitty cried exultingly, after the woman had
gone. “Didn’t I tell you that he was sick? You see now,--‘Tom’s always
there.’”

“Yes; but Tom may not be her husband, and I don’t think he is. He is
much more likely to be her child.”

“Mrs. Greenough, I’m astonished at you. You say that to be
contradictious. Now, it is not nice to be contradictious; besides, she
wouldn’t look so quiet and sad if Tom were only her boy.”

But weeks passed on, and nothing more was heard of Mrs. Graham, until,
at last, Thanksgiving Day was near at hand. Kitty was to have a new
dress, and Mrs. Greenough, who had undertaken to finish it, found that
she had not time.

“Oh, let me go for Mrs. Graham, mamma,” cried Kitty eagerly. “Luke can
drive me down to Hudson Street, and then I shall see Tom.”

Mrs. Greenough laughed and consented. In a few minutes Luke had brought
to the door the one-horse coupé, which had been the last year’s
Christmas gift of Mr. Greenough to his wife, and in which Miss Kitty
was always glad to make an excuse for going out.

Arrived at 17 Hudson Street, she tripped up two flights of stairs, and
tapped on the door, on which was a printed card with the name of Mrs.
Graham.

A voice, with a wonderful quality of musical sweetness in it,
answered,--

“Please to come in; I cannot open the door.”

If that were “he,” he had a very singular voice for a man.

“I guess mamma was right after all,” thought wilful Kitty. “It’s rather
curious how often mamma _is_ right, when I come to think of it.”

She opened the door, and saw, not Mrs. Graham’s husband, nor yet her
son, but a girl, whose face looked as if she might be about Kitty’s own
age, whose shoulders and waist told the same story; but whose lower
limbs seemed curiously misshapen and shrunken--no larger, in fact, than
those of a mere child. The face was a pretty, winning face, not at all
sad. Short, thick brown hair curled round it, and big brown eyes, full
of good-humor, met Kitty’s curious glance.

“_I_ am Tom,” the same musical voice--which made Kitty think of a
bird’s warble--said, in a tone of explanation. “I can’t get up to open
the door because, don’t you see, I can’t walk.”

“And why--what--Tom”--

Kitty struggled desperately with the question she had begun to ask, and
Tom kindly helped her out.

“Why am I Tom, do you mean, when it’s a boy’s name; or why can’t I
walk? I’m Tom because my father called me Tomasina, after his mother,
and we can’t afford such long names in this house; and I can’t walk
because I pulled a kettle of boiling water over on myself when I was
six years old, and the only wonder is that I’m alive at all. I was
left, you see, in a room by myself, while mother was busy somewhere
else, and when she heard me scream, and came to me, she pulled me out
from under the kettle, and saved the upper half of me all right.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” Kitty cried, with the quick tears rushing to her
eyes. “It must have almost killed your mother.”

“Yes; that’s what makes her so still and sober. She never laughs, but
she never frets either; and oh, how good she is to me!”

Kitty glanced around the room, which seemed to her so bare. It was
spotlessly clean, and Tom’s chair was soft and comfortable--as indeed
a chair ought to be which must be sat in from morning till night.
Opposite to it were a few pictures on the wall,--engravings taken from
books and magazines, and given, probably, to Mrs. Graham by some of her
lady customers. Within easy reach was a little stand, on which stood a
rose-bush in a pot, and a basket full of bright-colored worsteds, while
a book or two lay beside them.

“And do you never go out?” cried Kitty, forgetting her errand in her
sympathy--forgetting, too, that Luke and his impatient horse were
waiting below.

“Not lately. Mother used to take me down into the street sometimes; but
I’ve grown too heavy for her now, and she can’t. But I’m not very dull,
even when she’s gone. You wouldn’t guess how many things I see from
my window; and then I make worsted mats and tidies, and mother sells
them; and then I sing.”

Kitty stepped to the window to see what range of vision it offered, and
her eye fell on Luke. She recalled her business.

“I came to see if I could get your mother to sew two or three days for
me this week.”

Tom was alert and business-like at once.

“Let me see,” she said, “to-day is Tuesday;” and she drew toward her a
little book, and looked it over. “To-morrow is engaged, but you could
have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, if you want so much. Please write
your name against them.”

Kitty pulled off her pretty gray glove, and wrote her name and address
with the little toy-pencil at the end of her chatelaine; and then she
turned to go, but it was Tom’s turn to question.

“Please,” said the sweet, fresh voice, which seemed so like the clear
carol of a bird, “would you mind telling me how old you are? I’m
sixteen myself.”

“And so am I sixteen,” said Kitty.

“And you have a father and mother both, haven’t you?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Kitty.

“Oh, I’ve only mother, but she is good as two. Must you go now? And I
wonder if I shall ever see you again?”

“Yes, you _will_ see me again,” answered Kitty cheerily; and then,
moved by a sudden impulse of her kind, frank young heart, she bent
over and touched her lips to the bright, bonny face of the poor girl
who must sit prisoner there for ever, and yet who kept this bright
cheerfulness all the time.

“Oh mamma, I’ve had a lesson,” cried Kitty, bursting into her mother’s
room like a fresh wind, “and Tom has taught it to me; and he isn’t _he
_at all--she’s a girl just my age, and she can’t walk--not a step since
she was six years old.”

And then Kitty told all the sad, tender little story, and got to crying
over it herself, and made her mother cry, too, before she was through.

After dinner she sat half the evening in a brown study. Finally she
came out of it, and began talking in her usual impulsive manner.

“Can’t we have them here to Thanksgiving, mamma? There’s not a single
pretty thing in that house except Tom herself, and the rose-bush; and
every thing did look so bare and clean and poverty-stricken; and I know
they’ll never afford a good dinner in the world. Oh, say yes, mamma,
dear! I know you’ll say yes, _because_ you’re such a dear, and you love
to make every one happy.”

“Yes; but, first of all, I must love to make papa happy, must I not?
You know he never wants any company on Thanksgiving but grandpa and
grandma and Uncle John. I’m sure you would not like to spoil papa’s
old-fashioned Thanksgiving Day.”

Kitty’s countenance fell. She saw the justice of her mother’s
remark, and there was no more to be said. She sat thinking over her
disappointment in a silence which her mother was the one to break.

“But I’ve thought of a better thing, Puss,” said this wise mamma, who
was herself every bit as tender of heart as Kitty, and cared just as
much about making people happy. “No doubt Mrs. Graham and Tom would
just as much prefer being alone together as papa prefers to be alone
with his family; and how will it suit you if I have a nice dinner
prepared for them, and let you go and take it to them in the coupé?
Mrs. Graham is hardly the woman one could take such a liberty with; but
I’ll beg her to let you have the pleasure of sending dinner to Tom.”

“Oh, you darling!” and Mrs. Greenough’s neck-ruffle suffered, and her
hair was in danger, as was apt to be the case when Kitty was overcome
with emotion, which could only find vent in a rapturous squeeze.

Before bed-time Kitty had it all planned out. She was to go in the
coupé and take Bridget and the basket. Bridget was to mount guard by
the horse’s head while Luke went upstairs with Kitty and brought down
Tom for a drive; and while they were gone Bridget would take the basket
in, and see that every thing was right, and then go home.

Mrs. Greenough consented to it all. I think she enjoyed the prospect
of Tom’s ride, herself, just as much as Kitty did. While Mrs. Graham
was sewing there she made the arrangement with her, approaching the
subject so delicately that the most sensitive of women could not be
hurt, and putting the acceptance of both drive and dinner in the light
of a personal favor to Kitty, who had taken such a fancy to Tom.

The last afternoon of Mrs. Graham’s stay Kitty called her mother into
her room. Mrs. Greenough saw spread out upon the bed a thick, warm,
soft jacket, a woollen dress, a last year’s hat.

“You know them by sight, don’t you, mother mine? They are the last
winter’s clothes that I grew away from, and have taken leave of. May
Tom have them?”

“Yes, indeed, if you’ll undertake to give them to Tom’s mother.”

Kitty had seldom undertaken a more embarrassing task. She stole into
the sewing-room with the things in her arms.

“You’ll be sure, won’t you, Mrs. Graham, not to let Tom know she’s
going to ride until I get there, because I want to see how surprised
she’ll look?”

“Yes, I’ll be sure, never fear.”

“And, Mrs. Graham, here are my coat and hat and dress that I wore last
year, and I’ve grown away from them. Would you mind letting Tom wear
them?”

“Would I mind?” A swift, hot rush of tears filled Mrs. Graham’s eyes,
which presently she wiped away, and somehow then the eyes looked
gladder than Kitty had ever seen them before. “Do you think I am so
weakly, wickedly proud as to be hurt because you take an interest in
my poor girl, and want to put a little happiness into her life,--that
still, sad life which she bears so patiently? God bless you, Miss
Kitty! and if He doesn’t, it won’t be because I shall get tired of
asking Him.”

“And you’ll not let her see the hat and jacket till I come, for fear
she’ll think something?”

At last Mrs. Graham smiled--an actual smile.

“How you do think of every thing! No, I’ll keep the hat and jacket out
of sight, and I’ll have the dress on her, all ready.”

When Thanksgiving came Kitty scarcely remembered to put on the new
fineries that Mrs. Graham had finished with such loving care; scarcely
gave a thought to the family festivities at home, so eager was she
about Tom’s Thanksgiving. She was to go to Hudson Street just at noon,
so that Tom might have the benefit of the utmost warmth of which the
chill November day was capable.

First she saw the dinner packed. There was a turkey, and
cranberry-sauce, and mince-pie, and plum-pudding, and a great cake
full of plums, too, and fruit and nuts, and then Mr. Greenough, who
had heard about the dinner with real interest, brought out a bottle of
particularly nice sherry, and said to his wife,--

“Put that in also. It will do those frozen-up souls good, once in the
year.”

At last impatient Kitty was off. Bridget and the basket filled all the
spare space in the coupé, and when they reached Hudson Street, Luke
took the dinner and followed Kitty upstairs, while Bridget stood by
the horse’s head, according to the programme. He set the basket down
in the hall, where no one would be likely to notice it in opening the
door, and then he stood out of sight himself, while Kitty went in.

There was Tom, in the warm crimson thibet,--a proud, happy-looking Tom
as you could find in Boston that Thanksgiving Day.

“I have come to take you to ride,” cried eager Kitty. “Will you go?”

It was worth ten ordinary Thanksgivings to see the look on Tom’s
face,--the joy and wonder, and then the doubt, as the breathless
question came,--

“How _will_ I get downstairs?”

And then Luke was called in, and that mystery was solved. And then out
of a closet came the warm jacket, and the hat, with its gay feather;
and there were tears in Tom’s eyes, and smiles round her lips, and she
tried to say something, and broke down utterly. And then big, strong
Luke took her up as if she were a baby and marched downstairs with her,
while she heard Kitty say,--but it all seemed to her like a dream, and
Kitty’s voice like a voice in a dream,--

“I’m sorry there’s nothing pretty to see at this time of year. It was
so lovely out-doors six weeks ago.”

Through Beach Street they went, and then through Boylston, and the
Common was beside them, with its tree-boughs traced against the
November sky, and the sun shone on the Frog Pond, and the dome of the
State House glittered goldenly, and there were merry people walking
about everywhere, with their Thanksgiving faces on; and at last Tom
breathed a long, deep breath which was almost a sob, and cried,--

“Did _you_ think there was nothing pretty to see to-day--_this_ day?
Why, I didn’t know there was such a world!”

The clocks had struck twelve when they left Hudson Street; the bells
were ringing for one when they entered it again. Bridget was gone, but
a good-natured boy stood by the horse’s head, and Kitty ran lightly
upstairs, followed by Luke, with Tom in his arms.

Kitty threw open the door, and there was a table spread with as good a
Thanksgiving dinner as the heart could desire, with Tom’s chair drawn
up beside it. Luke set his light burden down.

Kitty waited to hear neither thanks nor exclamations. She saw Tom’s
brown eyes as they rested on the table, and that was enough. She bent
for one moment over the bright face,--the cheeks which the out-door
air had painted red as the rose that had just opened in honor of the
day,--and left on the young, sweet, wistful lips a kiss, and then
went silently down the stairs, leaving Tom and Tom’s mother to their
Thanksgiving.




FINDING JACK.


Conn turned over and rubbed her sleepy blue eyes. It seemed to her
that the world was coming to an end all at once, there was such a
Babel of noise about her. What was it? Had everybody gone mad? Then
her wits began to wake up. She remembered that it was Fourth of July.
That worst noise of all--why, that must be Jack’s pistol, which he had
been saving up money to buy all winter and all summer. And that other
sound--that must be torpedoes; and there was the old dog, Hero, barking
at them, and no wonder: it was enough to make any respectable dog bark.
Fire-crackers--ugh! Wasn’t the pistol bad enough, without all these
side shows? Just then Jack called out from the yard below,--

“Conn! Conn!”

The girl’s name was Constantia Richmond; but she was too slight and
bonny for such a long name, and everybody called her Conn.

She shook back her fair, soft curls, as golden as a baby’s still,
though Conn was fourteen, and, putting a little shawl over her
shoulders, peeped out of the open window--as pretty a little slip
of a girl as you would care to see--and looked down on the face,
half-boyish, half-manly, which was upturned to her. If Jack had been
her brother, perhaps she would have scolded at him; for Conn loved her
morning nap, and the general din had discomposed her, no doubt. But
Jack was only her cousin, and her second cousin, at that,--and it’s
curious what a difference that does make. Your brother’s your brother
all the days of his life; but your cousin is another affair, and far
less certain. So Conn said, quite gently,--

“What is it? Can I do any thing? But I’m sure I don’t want to help you
make any more noise. This has been--oh, really dreadful!”

She spoke with a droll little fine-lady air, and put her pretty little
fingers to her pretty little ears. And Jack laughed; he had not begun
to think of her yet as a charming girl,--she was just Cousin Conn.

“What!” he cried. “Not like noise on Fourth of July? Why, you don’t
deserve to have a country.”

“I’m sure I wish I hadn’t,” said Conn, with a little dash of spirit.

“Are you dressed?” cried the boy, nearly seventeen years old, but all a
boy still.

“No.”

“Well, just hurry, then, and come down. I’m off in half an hour with
the Brighton Blues, and I want you to see first how this pistol works.”

High honor this, that she, a girl, should be invited to inspect the
wonderful pistol!

Conn began to dress hurriedly. What should she put on? Her white dress
hung in the closet,--such a white dress as girls wore then,--all
delicate ruffles, and with a blue ribbon sash, as dainty-fine as
possible. She knew that was meant for afternoon, when Aunt Sarah would
have company. But might she not put it on now? Perhaps Jack wouldn’t be
here then, and she could be careful. So she slipped into the dainty
gown, and fastened hooks and buttons in nervous haste, and then looked
in the glass, as every other girl that ever lived would have done in
her place.

It was a bright, fair face that she saw there--all pink and white, and
with those violet eyes over which the long lashes drooped, and that
soft, bright hair that lay in little rings and ripples round her white
forehead, and hung a wavy mass down to the slender waist which the blue
ribbon girdled. Conn was pleased, no doubt, with the sight she saw in
the mirror,--how could she help being? She tripped downstairs, and out
of the door. Jack whistled when he saw her.

“What! all your fineries on at this time of day? What do you think
Mother Sarah will say to that?”

The pretty pink flush deepened in the girl’s cheeks, and she answered
him almost as if she thought she had done something wrong,--

“I’ll be so careful, Jack. I won’t spoil it. By and by you’ll be gone;
and I wanted to look nice when I saw the new pistol.”

This seemed extremely natural to Jack. The pistol was to him a matter
of such moment that no amount of demonstration in its honor would
have seemed too great. Viewed in this light, it really appeared quite
a meritorious act that Conn should have put on the white dress; and
he looked her over with that air of half-patronizing approval with
which boys are apt to regard the good looks of their sisters and their
cousins.

Then he exhibited the pistol. It had--as a boy’s knife or gun or boat
always has--distinguishing and individual merits of its own. No other
pistol, though it were run in the same mould, could quite compare with
it, and it was by some sort of wonderful chance that he had become its
possessor. Conn wondered and admired with him to his heart’s content.
Then came breakfast, and then the marching of the Brighton Blues. This
was a company of boys in blue uniforms,--handsome, healthy, wide-awake
boys from fourteen to seventeen years old,--every one of them the pride
of mothers and sisters and cousins. They were to march into Boston, and
parade the streets, and dine at a restaurant, and see the fireworks
in the evening, and I don’t know what other wonderful things.

[Illustration: Conn stood and watched them.--PAGE 129.]

Jack was in the highest spirits. He was sure he and his pistol were a
necessary part of the day; and he sincerely pitied Conn, because she
was a girl and must stay at home.

    “‘_Bang, whang, whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife;
    Oh! a day in the city square, there is no such pleasure in life!’”

he quoted; and then he called back to her from the gate,--

“It’s too bad, Conn, that there’s no fun for you; but keep your courage
up, and I’ll bring you something.”

And so they marched away, in the gay, glad morning sunshine, following
their band of music,--a boy’s band that was, too.

Conn stood and watched them, with a wistful, longing look in her great
violet eyes, and the soft, bright color coming and going on her girlish
cheeks. At last she gathered a bunch of late red roses, and put them
in her bosom and went into the house. She sewed a little, and then
she tossed her work aside, for who cares to work on holidays? Then she
took up her new book; but the tale it told seemed dull and cold beside
the warm throbbing life of which the outside world was full. She wished
over and over that she were a boy, that she might have marched away
with the rest. Then she wondered if she could not go into town and see
them from somewhere in all their glory. Very little idea had she of a
Boston crowd on Fourth of July. She had been into town often enough,
with her aunt or her uncle, and walked through the quiet streets; and
she thought she should have little trouble in doing the same now. She
looked in her purse; she had not much money, but enough so that she
could ride if she got tired, and she would be sure to save some to come
home. She called her Aunt Sarah’s one servant, and made her promise to
keep the secret as long as she could, and then tell Aunt Sarah that she
had gone to Boston to find Jack and see him march with the rest.

The girl was a good-natured creature, not bright enough to know that it
was her duty to interfere, and easily persuaded by Conn’s entreaties
and the bit of blue ribbon with which they were enforced.

And so Conn started off, as the boys had done before her, and went on
her way. But she had no gay music to which to march, and for company
she had only her own thoughts, her own hopes. Still she marched bravely
on.

There were plenty of other people going the same way; indeed it seemed
to Conn as if everybody must be going into Boston. Excitement upheld
her, and she trudged along, mile after mile, across the pleasant
mill-dam, and at last she reached Beacon Street. Her head had begun to
throb horribly by the time she got into town. It seemed to her that
all the world was whirling round and round, and she with it. But she
could not turn back then; indeed, she did not know how to find any
conveyance, and she knew her feet would not carry her much farther.
Surely, she _must_ see Jack soon. He had said they should march through
Beacon Street. She would ask some one. She had an idea that every one
must know about any thing so important as the Brighton Blues. At last
she got courage to speak to a kind-looking servant-maid in the midst
of a group on the steps of one of the Beacon-street houses. The girl
pitied her white face, so pale now, with all the pretty pink roses
faded from the tired young cheeks, and answered kindly.

She did not know about the Brighton Blues, but she guessed all the
companies had been by there, or would come. Wouldn’t the young lady sit
down with them on the steps, and rest, and wait a little?

And “the young lady” sat down. What could she do else, with the whole
world whirling, whirling, and her feet so strangely determined to whirl
out from under her? And then it grew dark, and when it came light again
there was a wet cloth on her hair, and she lay on a lounge in a cool
basement, and the kind girl who had cared for her told her that she
had fainted. And then she had some food and grew refreshed a little,
but was strangely confused yet, and with only one thought, to which
she held with all the strength of her will,--that she had come to see
Jack and must look for him till he came. So on the steps she stationed
herself, and the crowd surged by. Military companies, grown-up ones,
came and went with glitter of brave uniforms and joyful clamor of
music, and Conn watched, with all her soul in her eyes, but still no
Jack.

It was mid-afternoon at last when suddenly she saw the familiar blue,
and marching down the street came the boyish ranks, following their
own band--tired enough, all of them, no doubt, but their courage kept
up by the music and the hope of fireworks by and by. Conn strained her
eyes. She did not mean to speak, but after a little, when the face she
longed for came in sight, something within her cried out with a sharp,
despairing cry, “Oh, Jack, Jack!”

And Jack heard. Those who were watching saw one boy break from the long
blue line, and spring up the step where Conn sat, and seize in strong
hands the shoulders of a girl all in white, her face as white as her
gown, and some red roses, withered now, upon her breast.

“Conn--Conn Richmond!” the boy cried, “what _does_ this mean?”

“Don’t scold--oh, _don’t_ scold, Jack!” said the pitiful, quivering
lips. “I only came in to see you marching with the rest, and--I’m
tired.”

“Yes,” said the girl who had befriended her, “and she fainted clean
away, and she’s more dead than alive now; and if you’ve a heart in your
bosom, you’ll let your play soldiering go, and take care of _her_.”

And just then Jack realized, boy as he was, that he _had_ a heart in
his bosom, and that his Cousin Conn was the dearest and nearest thing
to that heart in the whole world. But he did not tell her so till long
years afterwards. Just now his chief interest was to get her home. No
more marching for him; and what were fireworks, or the supper the boys
were to take together, in comparison with this girl, who had cared so
much to see him in his holiday glory?

He took her to an omnibus, which ran in those days to Brighton, and
by tea-time he had got her home. He found his mother frightened and
helpless, and too glad to get Conn back to think of scolding.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was six years after that, that in the battle of Malvern Hill, July
1, 1862, Jack, a real soldier then, and no longer a boy playing at the
mimicry of war, was wounded; and next day the news came to the quiet
Brighton home.

Conn had grown to be a young lady in the sweet grace of her twenty
summers, and she was her Aunt Sarah’s help and comfort. To these
two women came the news of Jack’s peril. The mother cried a little
helplessly; but there were no tears in Conn’s eyes.

“Aunt Sarah,” she said quietly, “I am going to find Jack.”

And that day she was off for the Peninsula. It was the Fourth of July
when she reached the hospital in which her Cousin Jack had been placed.
She asked about him, trembling; but the news, which reassured her,
was favorable. He was wounded, but not dangerously. It was a girlish
instinct, which every girl will understand, that made Conn put on a
fresh white gown before she used the permission she had received to
enter the hospital. She remembered--would Jack remember also?--that
other Fourth of July on which they had found each other, six years
before. As if nothing should be wanting of the old attire, she met,
as she passed along the street, a boy with flowers to sell,--for the
flowers bloomed, just as the careless birds sang, even amid the horrors
of those dreadful days,--and bought of him a bunch of late red roses,
and fastened them, as she had done that other day, upon her breast.

The sun was low when she entered the hospital, and its last rays
kindled the hair, golden still as in the years long past, till it
looked like a saint’s aureole about her fair and tender face. She
walked on among the suffering, until, at last, before she knew that she
had come near the object of her search, she heard her name called, just
as _she_ had called Jack’s name six years before,--

“Oh, Conn, Conn!”

And then she sank upon her knees beside a low bed, and two feeble arms
reached round her neck and drew her head down.

“I was waiting for you, Conn. I knew you would come. I lay here
waiting till I should see you as you were that day long ago,--all in
white, and with red roses on your breast,--my one love in all the
world!”

And the girl’s white face grew crimson with a swift, sweet joy, for
never before had such words blessed her. She did not speak; and Jack,
full of a man’s impatience, now that at last he had uttered the words
left unsaid so long, held her fast, and whispered,--

“Tell me, Conn, tell me that you _are_ mine, come life or death. Surely
you would not have sought me here if you had not meant it to be so! You
_are_ my Conn,--tell me so.”

And I suppose Conn satisfied him, for two years after that she was
his wife, and last night he gave the old pistol of that first Fourth
of July to a young ten-year-old Jack Richmond to practise with for
this year’s Fourth; and pretty Mother Conn, as fair still as in her
girlhood, remonstrated, as gentle mothers will, with,--

“Oh Jack, surely he is too young for such a dangerous plaything.”

Father Jack laughed as he lifted little Conn to his knee, and
answered,--

“Nonsense, sweetheart. He is a soldier’s boy, and a little
pistol-shooting won’t hurt him.”

But how noisy it will be round that house on Fourth of July!




HER MOTHER’S DAUGHTER.


Syl Graham was an only child. Her name was Sylvia, but everybody called
her Syl, except that sometimes, half playfully and half chidingly, her
father called her Sylly. But that was a liberty no one else took,--and
for which Mr. Graham himself was not unlikely to pay in extra
indulgence.

Syl was seventeen, and she had never known any trouble in all her
young, bright life. Her mother had died when she was two years old; and
this, which might easily have been the greatest of misfortunes,--though
Syl was too young to know it,--had been turned almost into a blessing
by the devotion of her father’s sister, Aunt Rachel, who came to take
care of the little one then, and had never left her since.

Not the dead Mrs. Graham herself could have been more motherly or more
tender than Aunt Rachel; and the girl had grown up like a flower in a
shaded nook, on which no rough wind had ever been allowed to breathe.

And a pretty flower she was; so her father thought when she ran into
the hall to meet him, as he came in from business at the close of the
short November day.

The last rays of daylight just bronzed her chestnut hair. Her face was
delicately fair,--as the complexion that goes with such hair usually
is,--colorless save in the lips, which seemed as much brighter than
other lips as if they had added to their own color all that which was
absent from the fair, colorless cheeks. The brown eyes were dancing
with pleasant thoughts, the little, girlish figure was wonderfully
graceful, and Papa Graham looked down at this fair, sweet maiden with a
fond pride, which the sourest critic could hardly have had a heart to
condemn.

“Are you cross?” she said laughingly, as she helped him off with his
overcoat.

“Very,” he answered, with gravity.

“I mean are you worse than usual? Will you be in the best humor now or
after dinner?”

“After dinner, decidedly, if Aunt Rachel’s coffee is good.”

Syl nodded her piquant little head. “I’ll wait, then.”

The dinner was good enough to have tempted a less hungry man than Mr.
Graham, and the coffee was perfect. Papa’s dressing-gown and slippers
were ready, upstairs; and when he had sat down in the great, soft
easy-chair that awaited him, and his daughter had settled herself on
a stool at his feet, I think it would have been hard to find a more
contented-looking man in all New York.

“Now I’m very sure you are as good as such a bear can be,” said saucy
Syl; “and now we’ll converse.”

To “converse” was Syl’s pet phrase for the course of request,
reasoning, entreaty, by which Papa Graham was usually brought to accede
to all her wishes, however extravagant. He rested his hand now on her
shining chestnut braids, and thought how like she was to the young wife
he had loved so well, and lost so early. Then he said teasingly,--

“What is it, this time? A Paris doll, with a trunk and a bandbox; or a
hand-organ?”

“For shame, papa! The doll was four years ago.”

“All the more reason it must be worn out. Then it’s the hand-organ. But
I must draw the line somewhere,--you can’t have the monkey. If Punch
and Judy would do, though?”

“Now, Father Lucius, you know I gave up the hand-organ two years ago,
and took a piano for my little upstairs room instead; and you know I’m
seventeen. Am I likely, at this age, to want monkeys, Punch and Judys,
and things?”

“O, no! I forgot. Seventeen,--it must be a sewing-machine. You want to
make all your endless bibs and tuckers more easily. Well, I’ll consent.”

Syl blushed. It was a sore point between her and Aunt Rachel that she
so seldom sewed for herself. Aunt Rachel had old-fashioned notions, and
believed in girls that made their own pretty things.

“Now, papa, you are not good-humored at all. I had better have asked
you before dinner. You don’t even let me tell you what I want.”

Papa sobered his face into a look of respectful attention, and waited
silently. But now Syl was not quite ready to speak.

“Don’t you think pomegranate is a pretty color, papa?”

“What is it like?”

“O, it’s the deepest, richest, brightest, humanest red you ever saw.”

“Why, I think it must be like your lips;” and he drew her to him, and
kissed the bright young mouth with a lazy content.

“Perhaps it _is_ like my lips; then, surely it will look well _with_
them.”

“Where does this blossom of beauty grow?”

“It grows at Stewart’s. It has been woven into a lovely, soft-falling
silk, at four dollars a yard. Twenty-five yards makes a gown, and eight
yards of velvet makes the trimming and the sleeveless jacket, and the
velvet is six dollars a yard. And then there is Madame Bodin, she
charges like a horrid old Jew,--forty dollars just to look at a gown;
and then there are the linings and buttons and things. Have you kept
account, papa, and added it all up in your head?”

“I think it means about two hundred dollars. Isn’t that what you call
it, Sylly?”

“Yes, if you please. It’ll be _worth_ that, won’t it, to have your
daughter look like a love, when all the people come on New Year’s Day?”

“So that’s it,--that’s what this conspiracy against my peace and my
pocket has for its object,--that Miss Syl Graham may sit at the receipt
of callers on New Year’s Day, in a robe like a red, red rose. O Sylly,
Sylly!”

Syl pouted a little, the most becoming pout in the world.

“Well, I’m sure I thought you cared how I look. If you don’t, never
mind. My old black silk is still very neat and decent.”

“September, October, November,--it’s nearly three months old, isn’t
it? What a well-behaved gown it must be to have kept neat and decent
so long! And as to the other, I’ll consider, and you can ask me again
when I come home to-morrow.”

Syl knew what Papa Graham’s considers meant, and how they always ended.
She had gained her point, and she danced off and sang to the piano some
old Scotch airs that her father loved, because Syl’s mother used to
sing them; and Papa Graham listened dreamily to the music, while his
thoughts went back twenty years, to the first winter when he brought
his girl-bride home, only a year older, then, than Syl was now. He
remembered how the firelight used to shine on her fair, upturned face,
as she knelt beside him; how sweet her voice was; how pure and true and
fond her innocent young heart. And now Syl was all he had left of her.

Should he lose Syl herself, soon? Would some bold wooer come and carry
her away, and leave him with only Aunt Rachel’s quiet figure and fading
face beside him for the rest of his life?

Just then Syl might have asked him not in vain for any thing, even to
the half of his kingdom.

Next morning Syl went into the sewing-room. A young girl just about
her own age was there--altering, sewing, making all the foolish little
fancies in which Syl’s heart delighted, though her idle fingers never
wrought at them. Out of pure kindness of heart Syl found her way into
the sewing-room very often when Mary Gordon was there. She knew her
presence carried pleasure with it, and often she used to take some
story or poem and read to the young listener, with the always busy
fingers, and the gentle, grateful face.

But to-day she found the girl’s eyes very red as if with long weeping.
If Syl was selfish it was only because she never came in contact with
the pains and needs of others. She had “fed on the roses and lain among
the lilies of life,”--how was she to know the hurt of its stinging
nettles? But she could not have been the lovesome, charming girl she
was if she had had a nature hard and indifferent to the pains of others.

To see Mary Gordon’s red eyes was enough. Instantly she drew the work
out of the fingers that trembled so; and then she set herself to draw
the secret sorrow out of the poor, trembling heart.

It was the old story, so sadly common and yet so bitterly sad, of a
mother wasting away and fading out of life, and a daughter struggling
to take care of her, and breaking her heart because she could do so
little.

“I’m used to all that,” the girl said sadly, “and I don’t let myself
cry for what I can’t help. But this morning I heard her say to herself,
as I was getting every thing ready for her, ‘O, the long, lonesome
day!’ She thought I did not hear her, for she never complains; but
somehow it broke me down. I keep thinking of her, suffering and weary
and all alone. But I can’t help that, either; and I must learn to be
contented in thinking that I do my best.”

“But can’t you stay at home with her and work there?” cried Syl, all
eager sympathy and interest.

“No, I can’t get work enough in that way. People want their altering
and fixing done in their own houses, and plain sewing pays so poorly.
Sometimes I’ve thought if I only had a machine, so I could get a great
deal done, I might manage but to hire one would eat up all my profits.”

Syl thought a little silent while; and it was a pretty sight to see the
fair young face settle into such deep earnestness.

“Well,” she said at length, “at least you shall stay at home with her
to-morrow; for all those ruffles can be done just as well there as
here, and you shall carry them home with you. And you’d better go early
this afternoon; there’ll be enough work to last you, and I can’t bear
to think of her waiting for you, and wanting you, so many long hours.
We’ll give her a little surprise.”

Mary Gordon did not speak for a moment. I think she was getting her
voice steady, for when she did begin it trembled.

“I _can’t_ thank you, Miss Syl,--it’s no use to try; but the strange
part is how you understand it all, when you’ve no mother yourself.”

“Ah, but you see I have papa and auntie, and I just know.”

That day, after Syl and Aunt Rachel had lunched together, Syl said, in
a coaxing little way she had,--

“Aunt Rachel, we never want to see the other half of that cold chicken
again, do we?”

“Why, Syl--we”--

“Why, auntie, no--we never want to-morrow’s lunch furnished coldly
forth by this sad relic. And there’s a tumbler of jelly we don’t want,
either--and those rolls, and,--let me see, can sick people eat cake?”

“Why, Syl Graham, what are you talking about! Who’s sick?”

Syl grew sober.

“I’m thinking about poor Mary Gordon’s mother, auntie. She’s sick, and
dying by inches; and Mary has to leave her all alone; and I’ve told her
she shall stay at home to-morrow and make my ruffles, and we’ll pay her
just the same as if she came here. And don’t you see that we must give
her her dinner to take home, since she can’t come here after it?”

Aunt Rachel never said a word, but she got up and kissed Syl on each
cheek. Then she brought a basket, and into it went the cold chicken and
a cold tongue and jelly and buttered rolls and fruit, till even Syl
was satisfied; and she took the heavy basket and danced away with it to
the sewing-room, with a bright light in her dear brown eyes.

“I think you’d best go now,” she said. “I can’t get your mother,
waiting there alone, out of my mind, and it’s spoiling my afternoon,
don’t you see? And because you mustn’t come here to dine to-morrow, you
must carry your dinner home with you; and Aunt Rachel put some fruit
and some jelly in the basket that maybe your mother will like.”

That night, when Mr. Lucius Graham let himself into the hall with his
latch-key, his daughter heard him and went to meet him, as usual. But
she was very silent, and he missed his teasing, saucy, provoking Syl.

“Why, daughter, are you in a dream?” he asked once during dinner; but
she only laughed and shook her head. She held her peace until she had
him at her mercy, in the great easy-chair, and she was on the stool
beside him, as her wont was. Then, suddenly, her question came.

“Papa, do you think a pomegranate silk without velvet would be very
bad?”

He was inclined to tease her, and began with “Hideous!” but then he saw
that her lips were fairly trembling, and her face full of eagerness,
and forbore.

“How did you know you were to have the silk at all? But you know your
power over me. Here is your needful;” and he put into her hands ten
bright, new twenty-dollar bills.

“O, thank you! and _do_ you think it would be bad without the velvet?”

“Sylly, no; but why shouldn’t you have the velvet if you want it?”

And then came the whole story of poor Mary Gordon, and--in such an
eager tone,--

“Don’t you see, with the money the velvet would cost, and a little
more, I could get her the sewing-machine; and Madame Bodin wouldn’t ask
so much to make the dress if it is plainer?”

Mr. Graham was a rich man, and his first thought was to give her the
money for the machine, and let her have her pretty dress, as she had
fancied it, first. But a second thought restrained him. She was just
beginning to learn the joy and beauty of self-sacrifice. Should he
interfere? He kissed her with a half-solemn tenderness, and answered
her,--

“You shall do precisely as you please, my dear. The two hundred dollars
is yours. Use it _just_ as you like. I shall never inquire into its
fate again.”

And then she went away--and was it her voice or that of some blessed
spirit that came to him, a moment after, from the shadowy corner where
the piano stood, singing an old middle-age hymn, about the city--

    “Where all the glad life-music,
      Now heard no longer here,
    Shall come again to greet us,
      As we are drawing near.”

The next day, who so busy and happy as Syl--dragging Aunt Rachel from
one warehouse to another--it was in the days when sewing-machines were
costly--till she was quite sure she had found just the right machine;
and then ordering it sent, at three o’clock, no earlier, no later, to
Miss Gordon, No. 2 Crescent Place.

At a quarter before three Syl went there herself. The pleasure of
witnessing Mary Gordon’s surprise was the thing she had promised
herself, in lieu of velvet on her gown. She found the poor room neat
and clean, and by no means without traces of comfort and refinement;
and Mrs. Gordon was a sweet and gentle woman, such as Mary’s mother
must have been to be in keeping with Mary. She chatted with them for a
few minutes, noticing the invalid’s short breath and frequent cough,
and Mary’s careful tenderness over her.

“It’s too bad Mary can’t be at home all the time,” said Syl.

“Yes; but then to have her to-day is such a blessing. If you knew how
we had enjoyed our day together, and our feast together, I know you
would feel paid for any inconvenience it cost you.”

Just then an express wagon rumbled up to the door and the bell rang
loudly. Mary opened it at once, for their room was on the ground floor.

“A sewing-machine for Miss Gordon,” said a somewhat gruff voice.

“No, that cannot be. There is some mistake,” said Mary’s gentle tones.
And then Syl sprang forward, in a flutter of excitement, which would
have been pretty to see had there been anybody there to notice it.

“I’m sure it’s all right. Bring it in, please; and Mary, you will tell
them where to put it, in the best light.”

And in five minutes or less it was all in its place, and Mary was
looking, with eyes full of wonder, and something else beside wonder, at
Syl Graham.

“It’s nothing,” said Syl hurriedly; “it’s only my New Year’s present to
you, a little in advance of time.”

She had thought she should enjoy Mary’s surprise; but this was
something she had not looked for,--this utter breaking down, these
great wild sobs, as if the girl’s heart would break. And when she could
speak at length, she cried with a sort of passion,--

“O Miss Syl, I do believe you have saved my mother’s life! She will get
better--she must--now that I can stay here all the time and take care
of her.”

Syl was glad to get out into the street. She felt something in her own
throat choking her. Just a few steps off she met Dr. Meade,--her own
doctor, as it chanced,--and it struck her that it would be a good thing
if he would go in to see Mrs. Gordon. So she asked him.

“I’m going there,” he said. “I try to see her once every week.”

“And will she live--can she?”

The doctor answered, with half a sigh,--

“I’m afraid not. She needs more constant care, and more nourishing food
and other things. I wish I could help her more, but I can only give my
services, and I see so many such cases.”

“But she would take things from you, and not be hurt?”

“I should _make_ her if I had a full purse to go to.”

“Well, then, here are forty dollars for her; and you are to get her
what she needs, and never let her know where it came from--will you?”

“Yes, I will,” he answered earnestly. And then, after a moment, he
said,--“Syl Graham, you are your mother’s daughter. I can say no better
thing of you,--she was a good woman.”

Syl had a hundred dollars left; but that wouldn’t compass the
pomegranate silk, and Syl had concluded now she did not want it. She
had had a glimpse of something better; and that hundred dollars would
make many a sad heart glad before spring.

On New Year’s Day, Papa Graham was off all day making calls; and the
gas was already lighted when he went into his own house, and into his
own drawing-room. He saw a girl there with bands of bright chestnut
hair about her graceful young head; with shining eyes, and lips as
bright as the vivid crimson roses in her braided hair, and in the
bosom of her black silk gown. He looked at her with a fond pride and a
fonder love; and then he bent to kiss her,--for the room was empty of
guests just then. As he lifted his head and met Aunt Rachel’s eyes, it
happened that he said about the same words Dr. Meade had used before,--

“She is her mother’s daughter; I can say of her no better thing.”




MY QUARREL WITH RUTH.


I suppose if I had not loved Ruth Carson so much my resentment against
her would not have been so bitter. She was my first friend. She had no
sister, neither had I; and we used to think that no sisters could be
nearer to each other than we were. She had black eyes,--great, earnest,
beautiful eyes, with pride and tenderness both in them; sometimes one
and sometimes the other in the ascendant. I was yellow-haired and
blue-eyed, but we always wanted our gowns and hats alike, and coaxed
our mothers into indulging us. I don’t know whether Ruth suffered more
in appearance when the clear dark of her face was set in my pale blues,
or I, when her brilliant reds and orange turned me into a peony or a
sunflower; but we thought little about such effects in those days. If
Ruth got her new article of attire first, I must have one like it,
whether or no; and if I was first favored, she followed my example.

It was thus in every thing. We studied from the same text-books,
keeping a nearly even pace Ruth was quicker than I at figures, so she
helped me there; and my eyes were better than her near-sighted ones at
finding towns, mountains, and fivers on the atlas, so we always did our
“map questions” together. Of course our play hours were always passed
in company, and one face was almost as familiar as the other in each of
our houses. “The twins,” people used to call us, for fun; and if ever
two girls were all and all to each other, we were.

What did we quarrel about? It is a curious thing that I have forgotten
how it began. It was some little difference of opinion, such as seldom
occurred between us; and then, “what so wild as words are?” We said one
thing after another, until, finally, Ruth’s black eyes flashed, and she
cried out passionately,--

“I just about hate you, Sue Morrison!”

Then my temper flamed. It was a different kind of temper from
Ruth’s,--slower to take fire, but much more sullen and resolute. I
loved her as I did my own life, but I hated her also, just then,--if
you can understand that contradiction. I looked at her, and I remember
I thought, even then, how handsome she was, with the red glow on her
cheeks, and her eyes so strangely bright. I could have kissed her for
love, or cursed her for hate; but the hate triumphed. Slowly I said,--

“Very well, Ruth Carson. I shall not trouble you any more. I shall
never speak to you again, until I see you lie a-dying.”

I don’t know what made me put that last sentence in. I suppose I
thought, even then, that I could not have her go out of the world,
for good and all, without one tender word from me. When I spoke, Ruth
turned pale, and the light died in her eyes. I presume she did not
think I really meant what I said; but, at any rate, it startled her.
She did not answer. She just looked at me a moment. Then she turned
away, and, for the first time in years, she and I walked home, so far
as our roads lay the same way, on opposite sides of the street.

“Where is Ruth?” my mother asked, when I went in.

“Gone home, I believe,” was my only answer.

It seemed to me that I could not tell even my mother of this
estrangement, which had changed in a day the whole current of my life.
Of course, as time went on, she saw that all was different between Ruth
and me; but, finding that I did not voluntarily tell her any thing, she
ceased even to mention Ruth in my presence.

You cannot think how strange and solitary my new life seemed to me. For
the first time since I could remember I felt all alone. I don’t think
Ruth thought this unnatural state of things could last. The first day
after our quarrel she spoke to me, at school, half timidly. I looked at
her, and did not answer. She sighed, and turned away; and again, when
school was over, each of us went home alone on our separate path.

Sometimes I would find a bunch of roses on my desk, for it was June
when our quarrel took place, and all the roses were in bloom. Then,
later, I would lift up the desk cover and come upon an early apple
or a peach; later still, a handful of chestnuts. I always let the
roses wither without touching them; and the fruit I gave away, as if
unconscious where it came from. Ruth would watch me and sigh; but after
that first morning she never spoke to me. I think my rebuff then hurt
her too much for her to be willing to risk receiving such another. What
a strange, new, sad thing it was to get our lessons, as we did now, all
alone! How the hateful figures tormented me, without Ruth’s quick brain
to help me unravel them! How puzzled she looked, as I saw her holding
the map close to her near-sighted eyes, trying to find the rivers and
lakes and mountains all by herself!

It was a curious thing that after the first two or three days my
anger had passed away entirely. I held no longer the least bitterness
in my heart toward Ruth; and yet I felt that I must keep my word. I
looked upon my rash utterance as a vow, for which I had a sort of
superstitious reverence. Then, too, there was a queer, evil kind of
pride about me,--something that wouldn’t _let_ me speak to her when
I had said I wouldn’t,--wouldn’t _let_ me show her that I was sorry.
The teacher spoke to me about the trouble between me and Ruth, but he
might as well have spoken to a blank wall,--I did not even answer him.
Whether he said any thing to Ruth I do not know.

In the late fall there was a vacation, which held over Thanksgiving.
I had an idea that my mother watched me curiously to see how I
would pass those weeks without Ruth. But I was resolute to show no
pain or loneliness. I made occupations for myself. I read; I worked
worsted; I crocheted; I copied out poems in my common-place book; I
was busy from morning till night. One thing I did not do,--I did not
take another friend in Ruth’s stead. Several of the girls had shown
themselves willing to fill the vacant place, but they soon found that
“No admittance here” was written over the door. I think they tried the
same experiment with Ruth, with the same result. At any rate, each of
us went on our solitary way, quite alone. Ruth had her own pride, too,
as well as I; and, after a little while, she would no more have spoken
to me than I to her; but she could not help those great, dark eyes
of hers resting on me sometimes with a wistful, inquiring look, that
almost brought the tears to mine.

School commenced again the first of December. Ruth came, the first day,
in her new winter dress. It was a deep, rich red; and somehow she made
me think of the spicy little red roses of Burgundy, that used to grow
in my grandmother’s old-fashioned garden. My own new gown was blue. For
the first time in years, Ruth and I were dressed differently. We were
no longer “the twins.” I thought Ruth looked a little sad. She was very
grave. I never heard her laugh in these days. When it rained or snowed,
and we stayed at school through the noonings, instead of going home
for our dinner, neither of us would join in the games that made the
noontime merry. I suppose each was afraid of too directly encountering
the other.

But when the good skating came, both of us used to be on the pond. The
whole school, teacher and all, would turn out on half holidays. Both
Ruth and I were among the best skaters in school My father had taught
us, two or three winters before, and we had had great pride in our
skill. We had always skated in company before; but now, as in every
thing else we did, we kept at a distance from each other.

The pond used to be a pretty sight, on those crisp, keen winter
afternoons, all alive with boys and girls. A steep hill rose on one
side of it, crowned by a pine wood, green all the winter through. Great
fields of snow stretched far and away on the other side, and in the
midst was the sheet of ice, smooth as glass. Here was a scarlet hood,
and there a boy’s gay Scotch cap. Here some adventurer was cutting
fantastic capers; there a girl was struggling with her first skates,
and falling down at almost every step. I loved the pastime,--the
keen, clear air, the swift motion, the excitement. I loved to watch
Ruth, too, for by this time not only was all the bitterness gone from
my heart, but the old love was welling up, sweet and strong, though
nothing would have made me acknowledge it to myself. Wherever she
moved, my far-sighted eyes followed her; and, indeed, she was a pretty
sight, the prettiest there, in her bright scarlet skating dress, and
with her cheeks scarcely less scarlet, and her great eyes bright as
stars.

There came a day, at last, when we promised ourselves an afternoon
of glorious skating. The ice was in excellent condition, the sky was
cloudless, the weather cold, indeed, but not piercing, and the air
exhilarating as wine. I ate my dinner hurriedly--there was no time to
lose out of such an afternoon. I rose from the table before the rest,
put on my warm jacket and my skating-cap, and was just leaving the
house when my father called after me.

“Be very careful of the west side of the pond, Sue. They have been
cutting a good deal of ice there.”

The whole school was out; only when I first got there I did not see
Ruth. The teacher repeated to us what my father had said, but I
remembered afterward that it was not till he had done speaking that
Ruth came in sight, looking, in her bright scarlet, like some tropical
bird astray under our pale northern skies. As usual she and I began
skating at some distance from each other, but gradually I drew nearer
and nearer to her. I had no reason for this. I did not mean to speak to
her, and the pride that held me from her was as untamed as ever. But
yet something for which I could not account drew me towards her.

Did she see me, and wish to avoid me? I did not know; but suddenly she
began to skate swiftly away from me, and toward the dangerous west side
of the pond. I think I must have called, “Come back! come back!” but
if I did, she did not heed or hear. She was skating on, oh, so fast! I
looked around in despair--I was nearer to her than any one else was. I
shouted, with all my might, to Mr. Hunt, the teacher. I thought I saw
him turn at the sound of my voice, but I did not wait to be sure. I
just skated after Ruth.

I never can tell you about that moment. All the love with which I
had loved her swept back over my heart like a great flood. Pride and
bitterness, what did they mean? I only knew that I had loved Ruth
Carson as I should never, never love any other friend; and that if she
died I wanted to die too, and be friends with her again in the next
world, if I could not here. I think I called to her, but the call was
wasted upon the wind which always bore my voice the other way. So Ruth
skated on and on, and I skated after her. Whether any one was coming
behind me I did not know. I never even looked over my shoulder. It
seemed to me that some mad wind of destiny was sweeping us both ahead.

Suddenly there came a plash, the scarlet cap appeared a moment above
the ice, and then that went under, and there was no Ruth in sight,
anywhere. You cannot think how calm I was. I wonder at it now, looking
back over so many years, to that bright, sad, far-off winter day.
I succeeded in checking my own headlong speed, and, drawing near
cautiously to the spot where Ruth had gone down, I threw myself along
the ice. It was thick and strong, and had been cut into squares, so
it bore me up. I looked over the edge. Ruth was rising toward me. I
reached down and clutched her, I hardly know by what. At that moment I
felt my ankles grasped firmly by two strong hands, and then I knew that
I could save Ruth. I held her until some one helped me to pull her out,
and then I don’t know what came next.

I waked up, long afterward, in my own bed, in my own room. I seemed to
myself to have been quite away from this world, on some long journey.
A consciousness of present things came back to me slowly. I recalled
with a shudder the hard, sharply cut ice, the water gurgling below, and
Ruth, _my_ Ruth, with her great black eyes and her bright, bonny face,
going down, down. I cried out,--

“Ruth! Ruth! where are you?”

And then I turned my head, and there, beside me, she lay, my pretty
Ruth--mine again, after so long.

“She clung to you so tightly we could not separate you,” I heard my
mother say; but all my being was absorbed in looking at Ruth. She was
white as death. I had said I would not speak to her again until I saw
her lie a-dying. _Was_ she dying now? I lifted myself on my elbow
to look at her. I held my own breath to see if any came from her
half-parted lips; and as I looked, her eyes unclosed, and she put her
arm up,--oh, so feebly!--and struggled to get it round my neck. I bent
over her, and one moment our lips clung together, in such a kiss as
neither of us had ever known before--a kiss snatched from death, and
full of peace and pardon, and the unutterable bliss of a restored love.
Then Ruth whispered,--

“Sue, I have been only half a girl since I lost you. I would rather
have died there, in the black water from which you saved me, than not
to find you again.”

“I thought you _were_ dying, Ruth,” I whispered back, holding her
close; “and if you were, I meant to die too. I would have gone after
you into the water but what I would have had you back.”

Then we were too weak to say any thing more. We just lay there, our
hands clasped closely, in an ineffable content. Our mothers came and
went about us; all sorts of tender cares were lavished on us of which
we took no heed. I knew only one thing,--that I had won back Ruth;
Ruth knew only one thing,--that once more she was by my side.

That was our first and our last quarrel. I think no hasty word was ever
spoken between us afterward. The first one had cost us too dear.




WAS IT HER MOTHER?


Just a little voice, calling through the dark, “Mamma, O mamma!” and
then a low sound of stifled sobbing.

Colonel Trevethick heard them both, and they smote him with a new sense
of loss and pain. He had scarcely thought of his little girl since his
wife died, five hours before,--died at the very instant when she was
kissing him good-by, taking with her into the far heavens the warm
breath of his human love. He had loved her as, perhaps, men seldom
love, from the first hour of their first meeting.

“There is Maud Harrison,” some one had said; and he had turned to look,
and met the innocent gaze of two frank, gentle, very beautiful brown
eyes. “Brightest eyes that ever have shone,” he said to himself. Their
owner had other charms besides,--a fair and lovely face, round which
the ruffled hair made a soft, bright halo; a lithe, girlish figure; a
manner of unaffected cordiality, blent with a certain maidenly reserve,
and which seemed to him perfection. He loved her, then and there. His
wooing was short and his wedding hasty; but he had never repented his
haste, never known an unhappy hour from the moment he brought his wife
home, nine years ago, till these last few days, in which he had seen
that no love or care of his could withhold her from going away from him
to another home where he could not follow her,--the home where she had
gone now, far beyond his search.

She was a good little creature, and she did not rebel even at the
summons to go out of her earthly Eden in search of the paradise of
God. She longed, indeed, to live, for she so loved her own, and she
could have resigned herself to die more willingly but for her husband’s
uncontrollable passion of woe. That very day she had said to him, as he
knelt beside her,--

“Do not grieve so, darling! I am not going so far but that I shall come
back to you every day. Something tells me that I shall be always near
you and Maudie. You cannot call, or she cry, but that I shall hear
you. I know that when she most needs, or you most want me, I shall be
close beside you.”

And with that very last kiss, when her breath was failing, she had
whispered,--

“I shall not go so far as you think.”

Now when he heard the low call of his little Maudie and her smothered
sobbing, he remembered the words of his dead wife. Did she, indeed,
hear Maudie cry, and was it possibly troubling her? He got up and went
into the little room where the child had slept alone ever since her
sixth birthday, a couple of months ago. He bent over her low bed, and
asked tenderly,--

“What is it, darling?”

A tiny night-gowned figure lifted itself up and two little arms clung
round his neck.

“Bessie put me to bed without taking me to mamma. Mamma did not kiss
me good-night, and I want she should,--oh, I _want_ she should! Bessie
wouldn’t carry me to see her; and I want you to. Bessie said mamma
never _would_ kiss me again but that isn’t true, is it? You know I’ve
heard mamma say Bessie wasn’t always ’sponsible.”

Colonel Trevethick considered for a moment what he should say to
his child--how he could make her understand the great, sad, awful,
yet triumphant mystery which had come to pass that day under their
roof--the great loss, and the great hope that hallowed it.

She was such a mere baby it seemed hard to choose his words. Must he
tell her that her mamma would never kiss her again? But how did he know
that? When the dear Lord promised the “all things” to those who loved
Him, did it not include the joining of broken threads, the up-springing
of dead hopes, the finding one’s own again, somewhere? He thought it
must; for what a word without meaning heaven would be to him if his own
Maud were not there! He temporized a little.

“She cannot kiss you now, my darling, but you shall kiss her.”

So he lifted the little white figure in his arms, holding it close, as
one who must be father and mother both together, now, and carried his
little one across the hall to the room, where her dead mother lay,--oh,
so fast asleep!--with a look like a smile frozen upon her fair, sweet
face. He held Maudie down by the pillow on which her mother’s head
rested, but that did not satisfy her.

“Put me on the bed, please, papa. I get on the bed every night and kiss
her, since she’s been ill.”

So he let her have her will; and for a moment she nestled close to the
still dead heart, which had always beaten for her so warmly. Then she
lifted up her head.

“Mamma is very cold,” she said, “and she does not stir. Can she hear
what I say?”

Again something invisible seemed to warn him against taking away from
the child her mother. He answered very gently and slowly,--

“She’s dead, my darling,--what we call dead. _I_ do not understand
it--no one understands it; but it comes, one day, to everybody, and it
is God’s will. Your mamma cannot speak to us any more, and soon she
will be gone out of our sight; but she truly believed that she would
always be able to see your face and hear your voice, as when she was
here.”

“She _is_ here. Won’t she be here always?” the little girl asked,
growing cold with the shadow of an awful fear.

“No, dear, she will not be here long. In a few days this dear white
face will be put away, underneath the grass and the flowers; but the
real mamma, who loves little Maudie, will not be buried up. She will be
somewhere, I truly believe, where she can see and hear her little girl.”

For a moment the child slid again from his arms, and nestled close
against the cold breast, kissed the unmoving lips. Then she said,--

“Good-by, this mamma, who can’t see; and good-night, other mamma, that
hears Maudie.”

Colonel Trevethick marvelled. Had he, indeed, succeeded in making this
little creature understand; or had some one whom he could not see
spoken to her words of sweet mother-wisdom?

He carried her then, and laid her in her little bed, and went back to
his own loneliness; but half an hour afterward he heard the small voice
calling. “Papa, papa!” and again he went to her, and the little arms
came up around his neck, and held him fast.

“Can’t I go too, papa? If you ask God, won’t He let me? Because I do so
love my mamma.”

That afternoon Colonel Trevethick had felt as if he had nothing at all
left in this world; but now he realized how much emptier still his home
might be if he lost out of it this child who was so like her mother.

“Mamma would not want you to come,” he said passionately. “_She_ has
all heaven, and _I_ only you,--only you, little Maudie, in all the
world. Mamma wants you to stay with me.”

After that she was quite quiet; and when he looked in at her, an hour
later, she was sound asleep, with one little hand like a crushed white
rose under the red rose of her flushed cheek.

She never asked for her mother after that night; but her father was
sure that she never forgot her. She was the strangest, gravest little
creature. She never made any noise, even at her play; and she never did
any of the things for which her mother had been used to reprove her.
The trouble was that she was too perfect; there was something unnatural
about it which frightened Colonel Trevethick. He would have been glad
if she had been naughty, sometimes, like other children. He longed
to have her tease him, to see in her some spirit of naughtiness or
contradiction; but he saw none. She grew tall quite fast, but she was
very thin,--a little white wraith of a creature, who looked as if she
had been made out of snow, and might melt away as soon.

It was a good thing for Colonel Trevethick, no doubt, that he had her
to tend, and to be anxious about. It kept him from surrendering himself
to his own grief.

Nearly two years went on, and all the time the little girl grew more
and more frail; until, at last, when she had just passed her eighth
birthday, she was taken very ill. Her illness seemed a sort of low,
nervous fever, and she grew daily more feeble. A skilful nurse came to
share with Bessie the task of tending her, and her father was seldom
far away. Half the day he would be sitting in her room, and half a
dozen times in the night he would steal in to watch her breathing.

One afternoon, as he sat by her bed, she looked up at him with a sad,
tender look, too old for her years,--but then all her words and ways
were too old for her years.

“Papa,” she said, “I would get well if I could, to please you. I
_should_ get well, I know, if I had mamma to nurse me. Don’t you know
how she used, if my head ached, to put her hand on it and make it stop?”

A sudden mist of tears came between his eyes and the little white face
looking up at him. She had not spoken before of her mother for so many
months, and yet how well she remembered! Instantly his wife’s words,
that last day, came back to his memory. She had said, “I know that when
Maudie needs me most, or you most want me, I shall be there beside you.”

_Was_ she there now? Could she breathe upon the little wasting life
some merciful dew of healing? or was she, perhaps, by her very love and
longing, drawing the child home to herself?

That night Bessie was to sit up until one o’clock, and then to call the
nurse. As for Colonel Trevethick, he would be in and out, as usual.

He went to bed, and fell into sleep and a dream. His own Maud was
beside him as he saw her first, then as his bride, his wife, then with
Baby Maudie on her breast; just as of old he seemed to have her with
him again,--his pride, his darling, the one woman he had ever loved.

He woke at last. Had his dream, then, lasted the night through? Was
this red ray that touched his face the first hint of the rising sun? He
sprang up quickly. The whole night had indeed passed, and he had not
seen Maudie. He hurried into a dressing-gown and went to her room. He
expected to find the nurse there, but, instead, Bessie sat beside the
table just where he had left her the night before, but sound asleep.
Evidently she must have been asleep for hours, and had not called the
nurse, who had slept in her turn: they were all tired enough, Heaven
knows. But, meantime, what of Maudie? What harm had come to her, alone,
unattended?

He drew aside the curtain of her little bed and looked in. Surely this
was not the Maud he had left the night before, so pale and worn upon
her pillows? A face looked up at him bright as the new day. A soft,
healthy color was in the cheeks, and the moist lips were crimson.

“I knew I should be well if _she_ tended me,” a voice cried, gayer and
gladder than he had heard from her lips in two years.

What _did_ the child mean? Had she gone mad? He controlled himself, and
asked,--

“Who tended you, my child? I found Bessie sound asleep.”

“Yes; mamma made her sleep, and you, and nurse. She sent all of you the
dreams you like best; and all night long she sat here beside my bed,
with her hand on my head, just as she used to put it long ago. She was
all in white, and her hair fell about her shoulders, and her eyes were
very, very bright, and her lips, when she kissed me, seemed somehow to
melt away.”

“So you, too, dreamed about mamma, darling?”

“No, indeed, papa, I did not dream. Mamma sat there all night long,
with her hand upon my head. Sometimes I slept, but more often I woke up
to look at her; and all the time she sat there, and did not tire, until
the first sunshine came in at the windows; and then she kissed me and
went away. I did not see her go. Perhaps I shut my eyes a moment. Then
I looked and she was gone, and then I heard you coming in. She said she
was with me every day, but she couldn’t have come to me like _this_,
except because I needed her so very, very much. And she wanted to make
me well, because you would grieve for me if I came to her; and I was to
be very good, and tend you and make you comfortable; and I must laugh
and must make you laugh, for laughter was good, and the reason I got
ill was because I had been sorry so long, and had not laughed at all.
And I was _not_ to be sorry after _her_ any more, because she was very
happy, and nothing grieved her except when she saw you and me mourning
for her, and not knowing that she was waiting close beside us.”

“_Was_ it her mother? Can it _be_ it was the child’s mother?” the
father cried, uttering his thought aloud unconsciously.

“Of course it was mamma; and she has made me well. See if Dr. Dale does
not tell you I am well.”

Two hours afterward Dr. Dale came. He stood for a few moments beside
the little bed. He looked in the child’s glad eyes, he counted the
throbs of her pulse, he made her put out her healthy little tongue.
Then he turned to her father.

“Trevethick,” he said, “can you swear that this is the same little girl
I left here last night? If the days of miracles were not gone by, I
should say that one had been wrought here. I left, I thought, a very
sick little person, about whom I was anxious enough, certainly, to make
this my first call this morning; and I find my small patient so well
that I shall only keep her in bed a day or two longer, for form’s sake.”

“Perhaps it _is_ a miracle,” Colonel Trevethick said, smiling. But he
did not explain. There are some experiences too marvellous for belief
and too sacred for doubt or question, and that was one of them.

Two days afterward little Maudie went down to tea. She wore a fresh
white gown, with lovely blue ribbons, and looked as much like a little
angel in festal attire as a human child can be expected to look. But
she did not take her usual seat. She sat down, instead, behind the
tea-pot, where Bessie usually stood to pour out the tea.

“Hadn’t Bessie better do that?” papa asked, as he saw the little hand
close round the handle of the tea-pot.

But Maud laughed, and shook her head.

“No, I don’t think Bessie is ’sponsible,” she said; “and mamma said I
was to live just on purpose to do every thing for papa.”

And again Colonel Trevethick asked, but this time silently,--

“Was it--_could_ it have been the child’s mother?”




THE LADY FROM OVER THE WAY.


It was the twilight of Christmas evening,--that twilight which always
seems so early, since nobody is ever quite ready for it. The pale
gray of the winter’s sky was scarcely flushed by the low-lying sunset
clouds, though sometimes you could catch a gleam of their scant
brightness as you turned westward.

The streets of New York were crowded, as usual, but everybody seemed
even more than usually in a hurry. The air was intensely cold, and
nipped the noses of those who were late with their Christmas shopping;
but, in spite of it, men and women still jostled each other upon the
sidewalk, or stopped to look at the tempting displays of holiday goods
in the shops. Everybody, it seemed, had some small person at home who
must be made happy to-morrow.

From the window of a large but rusty-looking house on one of the
avenues, two children looked down at the throng below, as they had been
looking all day. They were in the fourth story of the house, and they
could not see into the street very distinctly, but still the movement
and the bustle interested them, and their mother was thankful that they
had it to watch.

She herself was sewing, catching the last glint of the sunset light
for her work, as she had the first ray of the dawning. She had been a
beautiful, high-bred woman; indeed, she was so still, though there was
no one to note the unconscious elegance of her gestures or the graceful
lines of her curving figure and bent head. She was very thin now, and
very poorly clad, but a stranger would have felt that she was a lady,
and wondered how she came in the fourth story of this house,--a great
house, which had been handsome, too, in its day, but which was now
let out to innumerable lodgers, mostly of the decent sort of honest,
hard-working, half-starved poor people. Not with such neighbors had
Mrs. Vanderheyden’s lot been formerly cast, nor for such uses as this
had the old house itself been designed. It had been a stately mansion
in its time, belonging to the estate of a good old Knickerbocker
family, which was quite run out now. But there was one great comfort in
this house: it had been so well built that its thick walls shut out all
alien noises effectually, and made solitude possible even in a tenement
house. Perhaps Mrs. Vanderheyden had thought of this when she chose her
abode there.

There was something in the faded grandeur of the old mansion that
harmonized with the lingering grace of her own faded beauty. Its lofty
walls were wainscoted with carved oak, almost black with time; and any
imaginative person would have been likely to people it with the ghosts
of the beautiful girls whose room no doubt this was in the old days.
There, between those windows, hung, perhaps, their great, gleaming
mirror, and into it they looked, all smiles and blushes and beauty,
when they were ready for their first ball. But Mrs. Vanderheyden’s two
little girls did not think of the other girls who might have lived
there once. They were too young for that, and too hungry. Ethel, the
elder, was only ten; and shy little Annie, beside her, scarcely seven.
They saw a sight, however, from the window at which they stood, that
interested them more than any vision of the past would have done.

The avenue on which they lived was in a transition state. Trade had
come into it and lodging-houses had vulgarized it, and yet there were
some of the rich old residents who still clung to the houses in which
their fathers and mothers had lived and died. There was one such
directly opposite; and to look into the parlor over the way, and see
there all the warmth and brightness and beauty of which they themselves
were deprived, had been one of the chief enjoyments of the little
Vanderheydens ever since they had been in the house. They were all that
Mrs. Vanderheyden had left, these two girls. Wealth was gone, friends
were gone, father and father’s home, husband and husband’s home--hope
itself was gone; but she was not quite alone while she had these two
for whom to struggle--to live or to die, as Heaven would. It was for
their sakes that she had worked from dawning till nightfall, though she
had felt all the time what seemed to her a mortal sickness stealing
over her. Their breakfast and dinner had been only bread, of which she
herself had scarcely tasted; but to-morrow would be Christmas, and
it should go hard with her but she would give them better fare then.
A dozen times during the day one or the other little voice had asked
anxiously,--

“Shall we surely, surely, have dinner to-morrow, because it is
Christmas Day?”

And she had answered,--

“Please Heaven, you surely shall. My work is almost done;” and then
she had stitched away more resolutely than ever on the child’s frock
she was elaborately embroidering. The children meanwhile were feeding
upon hope, and watching a scene in the house over the way, where, as
they thought, all that any human creature could possibly hope for had
already been given. Busy preparations had been made in that other
house for Christmas. There was a great Christmas-tree in one corner,
all full of little tapers, and a large, fair, gentle-looking woman had
been engaged much of the afternoon in arranging gifts upon it. Now,
with the twilight, a boy and girl had come in and were watching the
lighting up of the Christmas-tree.

“It’s so good of them not to pull the curtains down,” Ethel said, with
a sigh of delight. “It’s almost as good as being there--almost.”

“I do suppose that’s the very grandest house in all New York,” little
Annie said, in a tone of awe and admiration.

“Nonsense! You only think that because you are so little,” answered
Ethel, from the height of her three years more of experience. “_You_
forget, but _I_ can remember. We had a finer house ourselves, before
poor papa died. There are plenty of them, only we’re so poor we don’t
see them.”

“Oh, it’s good to be that little girl!” cried Annie. “See how pretty
her dress is, and how her hair curls; and she’ll have lots of presents
off that Christmas-tree.”

“So should we, if we had papa,” Ethel answered gravely. “Mamma, when we
get up to heaven, do you think papa will know we’re his little girls?”

“I’m sure he will,” Mrs. Vanderheyden answered; and then she rose
wearily. “It’s all done,” she said, as she shook out the lovely little
robe into which she had wrought so many patient stitches. “I cannot
carry it home just yet, I am so tired; I must lie down first; but you
shall have a good dinner to-morrow, my darlings.”

The children had seen her very tired before, and they didn’t think
much about it when she groped her way to a bed in the corner and lay
down, drawing the scant bed-clothes up over her. They stood at the
window still, and watched the merry children opposite, until at last a
servant came and pulled down the curtains and shut away from them the
Christmas-tree, with all its gleaming lights, and the boy and girl, who
were dancing round it to some gay tune which their mother played.

Then Ethel and Annie began to realize that they were cold and hungry
and the room was dark. Ethel lit a candle. The fire was nearly out,
but she would not make another till morning.

“I won’t wake up mamma,” she said, with the premature thoughtfulness
that characterized her; “she’s so tired. We’ll just have supper, and
then I’ll hear you say ‘Our Father,’ and we’ll get to bed, and in the
morning it will be Christmas.”

Some vague promise of good was in the very word: Ethel did not know
what would come, but surely Christmas would not be like other days.
“Supper” was the rest of the bread. And then the two little creatures
knelt down together and said their well-known prayers, and I think
“Our Father” heard, for their sleep was just as sweet as if they had
been in the warm, soft nest of the children over the way, tucked in
with eider down. Through the long evening hours they slept,--through
the solemn midnight, when the clear, cold Christmas stars looked down,
just as they had looked centuries ago when the King of Glory, Himself a
little child, lay asleep in an humble manger in Judea. Nothing troubled
their quiet slumber until the sunshine of the Christmas morning broke
through their dingy windows, and the day had begun.

“It must be ever so late,” said Ethel, rubbing her sleepy eyes, “and
mamma isn’t awake yet. But she was so tired. You lie still, Annie, and
I’ll build the fire, and when she wakes up she’ll find it all done.”

Very patiently the poor little half-frozen fingers struggled with the
scant kindlings and the coal that seemed determined never to light; but
they succeeded at last, and the room began to grow a little warm. Then
she dressed Annie, and then it began to seem very late indeed, and she
wondered if mamma would never wake up. She went to the bedside and,
bending over, kissed her mother gently, then started back with a sudden
alarm.

“Why, Annie, she’s so cold--almost like poor papa--only you can’t
remember--just before they took him away.”

“No, she can’t be like papa,” Annie said stoutly, “for he was dead, and
mamma is asleep.”

“Yes, she’s asleep,” said the elder sister firmly. “We must wait till
she wakes up. We’ll look over the way, and then, maybe, it won’t seem
so long.”

But over the way was brighter than ever this Christmas morning. The
curtains had been looped back once more, the table glittered with
lovely gifts, and presently the little girl who lived there came to the
windows. She looked up at them--they were sure of it; but they could
not have guessed what she said, as she turned away, and spoke to her
mother.

“O mamma,” cried the sweet young voice, “won’t you come and see these
two poor little girls? They stood there all day yesterday and last
night; and now see how sad they look. I can’t eat my Christmas candies
or play with my Christmas things while they look so pale and lonesome.
Won’t you go over and see them, mamma dear?”

Mrs. Rosenburgh was a woman of warm and earnest sympathies when once
they were aroused. When she was a girl she too had had quick impulses
like her child’s; but she had grown selfish, perhaps, as she grew
older, or maybe only careless; for the quick sympathies were there
still, as you could see, now that her little girl had touched them.

“To be sure I will,” she answered at once. “Poor little things! I wish
we could make merry Christmas for all New York; but since we can’t,
at least we won’t have faces white with want looking in at our very
windows.”

So the watching, wondering children saw the large, fair lady wrap
herself in a heavy shawl and tie a hood over her head, and then come
out and cross the street and enter their house.

“What if she saw us, and what if she is coming here!” Ethel said
breathlessly.

Then they listened as if their hearts were in their ears. They heard
feet upon the stairs and then a gentle tap, and the lady from over the
way stood in their room.

“I saw you at the window,” she said, “and came over to wish you a merry
Christmas. How is this? Are you all alone?”

“No, ma’am, mamma is in the bed there; but she was very tired
yesterday, and she hasn’t waked up.”

An awful terror seized Mrs. Rosenburgh. Had this woman died of want and
weariness, in sight of her own windows? She stepped to the bedside, and
drew away the clothes gently from the face of the sleeper. She looked a
moment on that fair, faded face, and then she grew white as death.

“Children,” she asked, “what are your names?”

“I am Ethel Vanderheyden,” the oldest girl answered, “and she is Annie.”

“And your mother--was she Ethel Carlisle once?”

“Yes, ma’am, before she married papa.”

“And your little sister is Annie?”

“Yes; she was named for mamma’s best friend, one she hadn’t seen for a
long, long time.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Rosenburgh had knelt by the bedside. She had lifted the
low-lying head upon her arm, and drawn a bottle of pungent salts from
her pocket, and she was crying as if her heart would break, while the
children looked wondering on.

“O Ethel, my own old Ethel, _wake_ up!” And then she dropped her cheek,
all wet with tears, against the white, cold cheek, that was so still.

Oh, was it the warm tears, or the voice that sounded from far away out
of the past, or only the strong odor that roused the poor soul from
that long, heavy sleep of exhaustion that had so nearly been the sleep
of death? I do not know, but I know the eyes did open, and beheld the
tender face bending above them. And then, like a little child, the
children heard their mother cry,--

“O Annie, Annie, have I been dreaming all this time?”

And then there were explanations, and the story of the long years
since Annie Bryant and Ethel Carlisle were girls together was told.
But the best of it all, the children thought, was when the lady from
over the way took them home with her, and told them the boy and girl
there should be their brother and sister, and they should live there
henceforth; for she, who had found again her best friend, would never
more let her struggle with want alone.

And so the children had gifts and dinner, and a merry, merry Christmas
in the bright, warm, crimson-hung room, which had seemed to them
such a paradise of delights when they looked down into it from their
fourth-story window through the falling shadows of Christmas Eve.




HIS MOTHER’S BOY.


The days were growing very dark for George Graham. He had not known
at first what it meant that black specks should so dance between him
and the page he tried to read, that his eyes should ache so much,
that all things should seem so strangely dim about him. It would have
been better, no doubt, had he stopped work as soon as he felt these
symptoms; but how could he? This was his last term at school, and if he
passed his examination creditably, especially if he thoroughly mastered
the bookkeeping he was trying so hard to conquer, he was to have a
place in Deacon Solomon Grant’s store, with wages that would not only
take care of himself, but greatly help his mother.

His mother was a widow, and George’s love for her was a sort of passion
of devotion. When he could scarcely talk, the first two words he put
together were, “Pretty mamma,” and ever since then she had been the
first and fairest of created beings to him. He was very fond of Susie
Hale, but Susie was only a nice girl,--a dear, sweet, good girl, such
as any fellow would like; but his mother was the elect lady to whom
were due his love, his care, his uttermost duty.

Mrs. Graham was the kind of woman for a son to be romantic about. She
was only seventeen when George was born; and now, when he was sixteen
and she was thirty-three, she was, so he thought, more beautiful than
ever. She had been a pretty, rather helpless little creature all her
life,--one of those women toward whom every man feels the instinct of
protection. George’s father had felt it always, and had never allowed
care to come near his dainty darling. His one great agony, as he lay
dying, was that he must leave her almost unprovided for. That was when
George was thirteen, and the boy would never forget how his father had
called him to his bedside, and charged him to take care of his mother.

“You are old enough to be her staff, even now,” the dying man had said,
clinging to his boy’s hand. “You can be good to her in a thousand ways,
save her a thousand cares, and in a few years more you can work for
her, and keep her comfortably, as I have done.”

George never forgot this trust for one moment. The plans he made in
life were all for his mother’s sake--his future was to be spent in her
service. He wanted to come out of school at the time of his father’s
death, and try by all manner of little industries to help take care
of the household, but his mother was too wise to permit this. She
developed a strength of mind and of body for which no one who saw her
pink-and-white prettiness,--the prettiness of a girl still, despite all
her years of married life,--would have given her credit.

She saw clearly that if her boy’s education stopped at thirteen, he
would be held in check all his life by his own ignorance--he must be
drudge always, and never master. So she made him go to school three
years longer.

How she lived and kept up her refined little home puzzled all
lookers-on, and indeed she hardly knew herself. She lived simply; she
was busy from morning till night. She sewed for one neighbor, she
helped another through some season of sickness, she taught a naughty
child who had worn out its welcome at school, but who could not wear
out Mrs. Graham’s sweet patience,--and all these things helped. It is
true, it was very often hard work to compass the simple necessaries of
life, but she struggled on bravely.

When George was sixteen he should come out of school, well trained, she
hoped, for a business man, and then things would be so much easier.
With this hope in view, she never repined. She kept her strength of
soul and her sweetness of temper, her fresh beauty and her fresh heart.
She kept, too, her boy’s adoration,--an adoration which was, as I said,
the romance of his life.

When the days began to grow so dark for George Graham, it was of his
mother that he thought. So far he had no ambitions, no hopes, that
were not centred in her. What if this growing shadow about him was to
increase until all was dark, until dense night shut him in,--a night
through whose blackness no star of hope could shine? What if he must
be no help to his mother, but only a burden on her for ever, a burden
lasting through heaven only knew how many helpless years?

He rebelled against such a fate madly. He stretched out his hands
toward heaven, he lifted the dumb prayer of his darkening eyes, but no
help came.

Dimmer and dimmer grew the world about him, more and more desperate the
gloom of his hopeless heart. His scholarship had been so fine that his
teacher hesitated to reprove his now continual failures; and George
said nothing of the increasing darkness around him,--nothing to his
mother, for he felt that it would break her heart; nothing to teacher
or school-mates, for it seemed to him his grief would be nothing to
them. But one afternoon the crisis came.

His recitation had been an utter failure, and, at last, his teacher
spoke in severe terms of the neglect which had become habitual. No
one who was present that day--not even the smallest child--will ever
forget the look of despair that swept over George Graham’s face, or the
gesture of helpless anguish with which he stretched out his hands, as
if to seek among them all some friend, as he cried,--

“God help me, sir! I have been going blind; and now I cannot see one
figure in my book--I can hardly see your face.”

There was a silence after this, through which came no sound but the
audible beating of George Graham’s tortured heart. Then the master sent
away the others, for school hours were nearly over, and tried his best
to comfort his stricken pupil. It might not be so bad as he feared, an
oculist might help him, perhaps it was only temporary.

To all these well-meant consolations George listened in a sort of
dreary silence. The words of the teacher entered his ears, but they did
not reach his heart or kindle his hope.

As soon as he could, he went away. He did not go straight home.
How could he face his mother and tell her what he _must_ tell her
now,--what she would be sure to hear from others, if not from him? He
kept thinking how she would take it. Would not all the light go out of
her face? Maybe she would faint away, as he remembered she had done
when his father died.

He sat down on a bank, a little removed from the road-side, a bank
which overhung a swift and deep, yet narrow stream.

An awful temptation came over him,--such a temptation as, thank Heaven!
comes to few boys of sixteen, with the young, glad life running riot
in their veins. He thought, what if he should die, then and there? It
seemed to him the one desirable thing. To be sure, to die would be to
leave his mother to fight her battle of life alone; but also it would
relieve her from the heavy burden he must needs be to her if he lived.
The river rushing down there below invited him with its murmur. Should
he seek refuge there, and let his mother hear that he was dead, before
she heard that he was blind? He bent forward over the stream. Then he
drew back, for a longing came over him to go home first, and see his
mother just once more; and then an exceeding bitter cry burst from his
lips,--

“_See_ her! What am I talking about? Do I not know I shall _never_ see
her again?”

And a girl’s voice, soft and cooing and tender,--an utterly unexpected
voice,--answered him,--

“Yes, you _will_ see her again. Surely you will see her again.”

The boy turned his face toward the sound.

“How did you come here, Susie Hale?” he asked.

“Don’t be angry, George,” the gentle voice entreated. “I waited for
you. I could not go home till I had told you how sorry I was, and tried
to comfort you.”

“Comfort me!” There was a sort of scornful bitterness in the cry. “How
_can_ I be comforted? Do you think what it will be never to see the
green earth or the blue sky, or any dear face any more, for ever and
ever?”

“But you will see them,” she said gently. “I did not mean that you
must be reconciled to give up hope. I mean that you must take heart,
and try to be cured. I have known people who could not see at all to be
helped, and why not you? At least, you must try.”

An evil mood was upon George Graham, and he answered harshly,--

“Where is the money to come from, if you please? It has been all mother
could do just to live and she has struggled on, in the expectation of
my being able soon to help her. She has no money for experiments. There
is nothing for it but for me to rest a dead weight upon her hands,
or--die.”

He said the last word with a sort of gasp. Susie Hale shivered. She
drew closer to him. She looked into his poor, tortured face, with her
dark and tender eyes, and said very quietly,--

“You believe in God, George Graham, and you will not defy Him. If He
means you to bear this you will bear it like a man, and not try to get
rid of the burden. But I do not believe He does mean you to bear it;
and I will not believe it till every means has been tried for your
cure. Just now, it seems to me, you ought to go home. Would you like
your mother to hear this first from some one else?”

He rose slowly.

“You are right,” he said, “and you are a good girl. Good-by, Susie.”

She did not try to go with him; she followed him only with her eyes.
She was contented if she could but send him home in safety to his
mother.

His mother met him at the gate. When she took his hand in hers the poor
fellow felt that she knew all. She was very quiet and self-controlled.

“Your teacher has been here,” she said, “and he has told me. My
darling, why have you sat in the darkness, and shut your mother out
from any share in your trouble?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you, mother!” he sobbed, with his head upon her
breast, at last,--“I couldn’t, I thought it would break your heart.”

“Ah! that was because you did not know. If you should die and leave me
alone in the world, _that_, indeed, would break my heart; but while
I have you beside me, nothing can make me altogether miserable, and
nothing must make you so. There is help somewhere, and we will find it,
please God; or, if not, we will bear what others have borne, and find a
way to lighten the darkness.”

Meantime, Susie Hale had gone home full of an absorbing purpose.
Somehow money must and should be raised to try what a skilful oculist
could do for George Graham.

Susie was the orphan niece of Deacon Solomon Grant, in whose store
a place was awaiting George. She knew that she had a modest little
fortune of her own, but it was all in her uncle’s hands, and without
his consent she could not dispose even of her slender income. But
would he not be persuaded to let her have enough of her own money
to accomplish her desire? She asked him, using her utmost power of
persuasion to touch his heart, but he refused with peremptory decision.
He wouldn’t mind contributing moderately to a fund for young Graham’s
help--he would not even mind letting her have five or ten dollars of
her own for that purpose--but beyond that the duty of one neighbor did
not go. And Deacon Solomon shut his lips together as tightly as he
buttoned up his pocket.

Susie had in the world one treasure,--a diamond ring which had been her
mother’s, with a stone white and clear as a dew-drop. This must, she
knew, be worth three or four hundred dollars. It was her very own. She
had meant to keep it all her life for her mother’s sake, but surely
this great need of George Graham’s justified her in parting with it.

She had one friend in Boston,--an old teacher,--in whose good faith and
judicious management she felt implicit confidence, and to him she sent
her mother’s ring, with a request that he would sell it as speedily
and on as good terms as possible, and remit her the price of it in
bank-notes, not in a check, and keep for ever the secret that she had
disposed of it.

It was a week after George Graham had given up hope, when a most
unexpected hope came to him. A neighbor, going by from the post-office,
handed in at the door a letter addressed to him. Mrs. Graham opened
it, for George’s vision had failed with every day, and his eyes were
utterly useless now.

“George,” she cried, after a moment, in an eager, trembling voice,
“here are three one-hundred dollar bills, and this is the letter that
comes with them:--

“‘This money is from a true friend of George Graham’s, and is to be
applied to taking him to an oculist, in the hope that his sight may
be restored. The giver withholds his name, both because he desires
no thanks, and because he wishes to make the return of the money
impossible.’

“It is from Heaven, itself!” the mother cried. “George, we will start
for Boston to-morrow. I feel in my soul that you are to be cured.”

The next day a mother and her blind son sought rooms at a quiet
boarding-house, of which they had found the number in the advertisement
column of a city paper, and the day after that they were among the
earliest patients of Doctor Annesley. The first examination of George’s
eyes was unpromising enough. They would be worse before they were
better; an operation might or might not restore sight to them, but the
time for it had not yet come. Meanwhile the doctor wanted to see him
daily.

Those were weary days and weeks that followed, both before the
operation and afterward, when the poor eyes were carefully bandaged
from the light, and mother and son sat day after day in the dark
together, wondering, wondering, wondering what the result would be.
It was curious that the mother was always hopeful, and the son always
despairing. At last it almost irritated him to hear her speak of hope
to him; and one day he turned on her with the first burst of passionate
impatience she had ever experienced from him.

“Mother,” he said, “for the love of Heaven do not talk to me as if it
was a sure thing that I am going to see again. I _want_ to think it
doubtful, almost impossible. If you should make me expect a sure cure,
and then it shouldn’t come, don’t you see that I should go mad? I think
I should dash my head against the wall. I can only _live_ by expecting
nothing.”

After that the mother held her peace; but whenever she went out of
that darkened room those who saw her marvelled at the light of joy in
her eyes, the bloom of hope upon her cheeks. At last the time came--the
bandage was removed. There was just one wild cry, “Mother, I see you!”
and then George Graham lay at the doctor’s feet, swooning and helpless
in his great joy.

It was weeks yet before he went home again, but the good news preceded
him. The mother wrote it to Deacon Grant, who had agreed still to
keep the place in his store open, while awaiting the result of this
experiment.

The deacon read the letter in full family conclave, with the slow
deliberation of a man unused to correspondence. He little knew how his
niece longed to snatch the paper from his hand and read it for herself;
nor did he heed the tears that swam in her dark eyes.

Deliberately he smoothed out the letter, and folded it. Deliberately he
took off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on again. Then
he said, with the half pompous, half solemn manner which became his
position,--

“Well, well, I’m ready always to rejoice with those that rejoice; and
I’m sure I’m thankful that the Widow Graham hasn’t got to struggle with
so much trouble as it looked as if Providence was laying on her; but
wherever she got that money the Lord knows.”

Another letter came, afterward, to tell when the widow and her son were
to return, and to ask Deacon Grant, in whose keeping the key of their
house had been left, to put it in their door on that day as he was
passing by to the store.

It was Susie who walked over with the key, early in the afternoon,
carrying with her a basket of dainties for the travellers’ supper, from
Mrs. Grant, a woman who knew how to be a good neighbor, and to make
life pleasant with cheap kindnesses. Susie’s black eyes danced, and her
heart sang within her as she set the table in the little parlor and
lighted a fire in the kitchen stove, ready to make a fresh cup of tea
whenever the widow and her son should arrive. Then she dusted every
thing; and then she gathered some of the flowers of September,--for
already the summer was over,--and put them in the vases on the mantel,
and on the widow’s little round sewing-table.

And at last the travellers came, as at last every thing does come, if
we wait long enough for it. They had expected to find an empty house;
they found instead, warmth and brightness and good cheer and Susie
Hale.




DR. JOE’S VALENTINE.


There were half-a-dozen of the girls together,--pretty creatures, in
the very first season of their long dresses,--the eldest not quite
sixteen. They were all braids and puffs and fluffy curls, all loops and
ruffles and ribbons, all smiles and dimples. It was the Saturday before
Valentine’s Day, in a certain year of grace, of which I will not give
you the precise date, but less than ten years ago, and more than five.
Of the half-dozen girls, two are busy teachers now, two are married,
one is playing mother to her brother’s little brood of orphan children,
and the sixth, not less happy than the rest, has gone on to “the next
country,” where they tell us she will never grow old, never be sick or
sorry any more,--happy Bertha, whom, surely, God loved.

But, that day in February, none of them thought much about the future:
the present was enough, with its fun and frolic, its wealth of all the
pleasures which girlhood holds dear. The six were passing the long
day together. Two of them were sisters and belonged in one house, and
the rest had come there to be with them; for they were all going to
make valentines. They had made funny ones and foolish ones, tender
ones, with just a little dash of satire in them, poetic ones and prosy
ones; and at last it was dinner-time, a feast of all the things that
school-girls love, and these were hungry girls. At least they were all
hungry girls but Nelly Hunt, and she scarcely ate any dinner at all,
she was so busy thinking. She was Bertha’s sister, and this was her
home and Bertha’s, and it was to the girls’ own room that the little
party went back again, after they had eaten and praised Mrs. Hunt’s
dinner.

“What are you thinking about, Nell?” Bertha asked, sitting on the arm
of Nelly’s chair.

“These valentines,” Nelly answered slowly.

“Well, surely they need not make you sober,--they are absurd enough.”

“Yes, and it’s just because they are so absurd that they make me sober.
I was wondering why we couldn’t just as well have said something to
help somebody--to make somebody think--to do some good.”

“Nelly’s heroics!” cried Kate Greene flippantly. “Miss Hunt as a moral
reformer!”

Nelly blushed from her pretty ears to the roots of her sunny hair; but
her eyes shone clear, and there was a ring of earnestness in her voice
as she answered,--

“You can laugh if you will, but I mean what I say, and I’m going to try
an experiment. I will write one boy a valentine, such as I think a girl
ought to write, and I’ll send it.”

“So you shall,” Bertha said gently,--Bertha always was peacemaker,--“and
we’ll all go away and see mamma and the baby while you write it. When
it’s done you must call us.”

“Yes, and you must show it to us,” cried Kate Greene, as she went away;
“that’s only fair. We promised this morning to show each other all we
sent, and we sha’n’t let you off.”

And then the five fluttered away like a flock of birds, and Nelly was
quite alone.

Her task was harder than she had imagined. It is only the old, perhaps,
who are sage in counsel by nature. At any rate, to give good advice
did not come naturally to pretty Nelly. But she had an idea of what
she wanted to say, and at last she got it said. She had written and
rewritten it, and finally concluded that she could do no better, and
then copied it out into her neatest handwriting before she called the
others. It was a little stiff, to be sure, and preachy and high-flown,
but it sounded like a lofty effort and a complete success to the
listening girls. This was what it said:--

“MY VALENTINE,--You will have plenty of fine speeches and praises,
and, perhaps, of fun and fancy from others, so I shall not give you
those,--I who have but one interest in you, namely, that you should be
the best boy and the best man which it is possible for you to become.
If you are selfish, if you are indolent, if you are mean, you will
never be happy in your own society, until you have sunk so low that
you don’t know the difference between goodness and badness. But if you
set out to be a gentleman and a man of honor and a faithful worker, you
will do good deeds and live a happy life, and be worthy the everlasting
esteem of

  YOUR VALENTINE.”

[Illustration: Nelly Reading her Valentine.--PAGE 220.]

Nelly read it with rising color and a little quiver about her mouth,
which Bertha understood; but she read it with firm voice and careful,
deliberate accent.

“Then,” she said, when she had finished, “I shall burn up all the rest
of my valentines, and send only this one; for it is what I mean, in
earnest, and, as old Aunty Smoke says, ‘Ef it don’t do no good, it
can’t do no harm.’”

“To whom shall you send it, dear?” Bertha asked gently, a little
subdued by Nelly’s epistolary success.

“I hadn’t made up my mind,” Nelly answered thoughtfully; “they all need
it.”

“O, send it to Joe, my cousin Joe,” cried Kitty Greene. “He is staying
with us, and _he_ needs it--bad enough. If ever a boy was full of his
pranks, Joe is, and if ever a boy tormented a girl’s life out, Joe does
mine.”

A color clear and bright as flame glowed on Nelly Hunt’s cheeks. Had
she had dark-eyed Joe in her mind all the while? She only answered very
quietly,--

“I don’t mind. I had just as lief send it to Joe. That is, I’ll send it
to him if you’ll promise, on your sacred honor, never in any way to let
him know who wrote it.”

“Oh, I will--true as I live and breathe I’ll never tell him, and never
let him guess, if I can help it.”

“And all you girls?” Nelly asked, with the pretty pink glow deepening
in her cheeks. “Will you all promise?”

And they all promised; for there was a sort of honest earnestness in
Nelly’s nature to which they found it natural to yield.

So the valentine was directed in Nelly’s most neat and proper manner to
“Mr. Joe Greene,” and was dropped into the post-office with the rest of
the valentines the girls had written that day.

On the fifteenth the six girls were all together at school, comparing
notes and exchanging confidences. But Kitty Greene drew Nelly aside,
and said, while they walked up and down the hall together, their arms
around each other as girls will,--

“I saw Joe get it, Nelly.”

Nelly’s pretty cheeks glowed and her eyes shone like stars, but she
asked no questions. Indeed, they were scarcely necessary, for Kitty was
eager enough to tell her story.

“He got it, don’t you think, along with half-a-dozen others, and he
read them all before he came to this one. I knew this, you know, by
the shape of the envelope. When he came to it I saw him read it all
through, and then I saw him go back and read it again. I heard him say
to himself,--

“‘That’s an honest letter from some little saint.’

“Then he came up to me and held it toward me, while I pretended to be
very busy with my valentines. Then he asked,--

“‘Do you know that handwriting, Kit?’

“I felt like an awful little liar, but I had promised you. I stretched
out my hand for it, and said carelessly,--

“‘Why, ain’t it Sue’s?’

“Sue is his sister, you know. So he thought I did not know who it came
from, and he changed his mind, and put it into his pocket, and went
off. When I teased him afterward to let me see it, he said,--

“‘No; there are some things a fellow would be a cad to show.’

“So I saw it hit home, and well it might. It was a tremendous letter,
Nelly.”

And Kitty ended with a hug and a kiss, and a look of that loyal
admiration which a girl can give another girl now and then.

When the spring came Joe Greene went away from Chester, and did not
come back there any more. No doubt Nelly Hunt would have forgotten his
very existence but for the valentine, which she could not forget. She
used to blush, as she grew older, to think how “bumptious” it was, as
she used to call it to herself. What was _she_, that she should have
undertaken to preach a sermon to that boy? What if he remembered it
only to think how presuming it was, and to laugh at it? But, luckily,
he did not know from whom it came; and with that thought she cooled her
blushes.

Nelly was twenty when Joe Greene came back to Chester again. And now
he came as a physician, just through his studies, and anxious to build
up a practice. Soon his fame grew. His patients were among the poor at
first, and he cured them; and then richer people heard of it, and sent
for him. But, while he took all the patients that came, he never gave
up his practice among those who most needed him. His praise was in all
their mouths. There had never been any doctor like this one.

Nelly was Miss Hunt now, for Bertha had gone away from her into the
other, unknown country, and Nelly’s grief had made her gentle heart yet
more gentle, and her helpful spirit yet more helpful.

Toward night, one summer day, she had gone to see an old woman who
had been her nurse once, and had found her very ill,--quite too ill
to be left alone, and certainly in need of a physician. So Nelly tore
a leaf from her memorandum-book and wrote on it a few lines, begging
Dr. Greene to come at once, and then called to the first passer-by and
entreated him to take it to the doctor.

It was scarcely half an hour before Dr. Greene came in, quietly and
gravely. He attended to his patient with that careful consideration
which made all those poor souls whom he visited adore him. Then he
turned to Nelly.

“Who will stay with her to-night?” he asked; “for, indeed, she hardly
ought to be left alone.”

“I shall stay,” was the quiet answer.

“Then come to the door with me, please, and let me give you your
directions.”

Nelly followed, and stood there, in the soft summer dusk,--a pretty
picture, with the wild-rose flush dawning in her cheeks, and a new
light kindling her eyes. She listened carefully to all his injunctions,
and then turned as if to go. But he put out a hand to detain her.

“How very much I owe to you!” he said.

“_You_, how?” And a deep, deep crimson dyed Nelly’s face and throat. In
that moment she thought of her “bumptious” valentine, which had not
crossed her mind before for a long time.

He looked at her with a smile in his eyes, but with a face that
preserved all its respectful gravity. He took a red leather case out
of his pocket, and from the case he took the very old valentine which
Nelly remembered so well. Then he produced the brief note she had
written that afternoon; and still there was light enough left in the
day to see them by, as he held them side by side.

“Your hand has matured somewhat since this valentine was written,” he
remarked quietly; “but some of these letters I should know anywhere. No
one could deceive me.”

“I did not suppose you had kept that foolish thing,” Nelly said, with a
pitiful little quiver in her voice, as if she were just on the point of
bursting into tears. “I am so ashamed!”

Dr. Joe looked at her a moment, as she stood there in the waning
light,--a lovely, graceful girl from whom any man might be proud to win
even a passing interest. So this was the woman, the thought of whom
he had carried in his heart for years! If he had ever done any good
thing, he was paid for it in the satisfaction of that hour.

“Are you sorry,” he asked slowly, “that you have helped one man to be
his best self? Those words of yours were to me like the voice of my
inmost soul. Since then this paper has never left me, nor have I ever
ceased to strive to be worthy of the esteem of my unknown ‘valentine.’
If ever I have been generous instead of selfish, brave instead of
cowardly, strong instead of weak, it has been because I have remembered
the words written here, and meant to live in their spirit. Are you
sorry for that? or do you grudge me the dear pleasure of thanking you?”

“No, I’m not sorry, nor do I grudge you any thing; but it was a girl’s
freak, and I am not worthy of so much praise and honor.”

“It was a good girl’s good intention,” he said almost solemnly. “Let us
be thankful that it succeeded.”

Nelly went back to the bedside of the old woman with a fluttering
heart. How strange it seemed to think this sick woman was old enough
to have outlived all anxieties except those about her pains and her
supper! Had not she been young once? and had no one ever looked at her
as Dr. Joe looked?

The next morning he came again. His medicine, a night’s sleep, Nelly’s
care,--something seemed to have given the poor old patient a fresh
lease of life. There was no need that Nelly should stay with her any
more; but she went to see her daily, and it was curious how often Dr.
Joe’s visits happened at the same time.

One night the doctor had left his horse at home, and he and Nelly
walked away together. They talked about the lingering sunset and the
soft south wind and even the old woman; for Nelly, woman-like, was
struggling desperately to keep Dr. Joe from saying what she desperately
wanted to hear. But, at last, it came,--a half-blunt, half-awkward
speech, yet with Dr. Joe’s honest heart in it,--

“I’ve lived all these years just to earn your esteem, and now I find I
don’t care a thing about that unless I can also win your love.”

I think Nelly’s answer must have satisfied him, for she is Mrs.
Joseph Greene now; and that valentine--worn and old, but choicely
framed--always hangs over the doctor’s study table.

[Illustration]

       *       *       *       *       *




_Bright; Lively, and Enjoyable_

“Jolly Good Times” Series

_By Mary P. Wells Smith_

  JOLLY GOOD TIMES; or, CHILD LIFE ON A FARM.
  JOLLY GOOD TIMES AT SCHOOL; also, SOME TIMES NOT SO JOLLY.
  THE BROWNS.
  THEIR CANOE TRIP.
  JOLLY GOOD TIMES AT HACKMATACK.
  MORE GOOD TIMES AT HACKMATACK.
  JOLLY GOOD TIMES TO-DAY.
  A JOLLY GOOD SUMMER.

[Illustration]

_With Illustrations, 12 mo, cloth, gilt, $1.25 per volume. The set of
eight volumes, uniformly bound in cloth, gilt, in a box, $10.00._

Of these stories the Boston “Transcript” says: “Few series of juvenile
books appeal more strongly to children than the ‘Jolly Good Times’
Series, written by Mary P. Wells Smith. The naturalness of the stories,
their brightness, their truth to boy and girl life and character, and
the skill with which the author manages incident and dialogue, have
given them deserved popularity.”

It is Mrs. Smith’s happy ability to take the incidents of
child-life,--such a life as any child of bright mind and sweet
character, blessed with the surroundings of a good home, might
have,--and to record them with such faithfulness to the child’s
character, and yet with such charm in the narrative, as to make them
engagingly interesting to other children.--_Gazette and Courier_,
Greenfield, Mass.




The Young Puritans Series

_By Mary P. Wells Smith_

_Author of “The Jolly Good Times” Series_

  THE YOUNG PURITANS OF OLD HADLEY.
  THE YOUNG PURITANS IN KING PHILIP’S WAR.
  THE YOUNG PURITANS IN CAPTIVITY.
  THE YOUNG AND OLD PURITANS OF HATFIELD.

_Cloth, 12mo, Illustrated, each, $1.25._

Mrs. Smith deserves very hearty commendation for the admirable pictures
of Puritan life which are drawn with a skilful hand in this book. She
has chosen a representative Puritan village as the scene, and the
period of very early settlement of western Massachusetts for her story,
a village which retains many of its early features to this day. Mrs.
Smith knows the people of whom she writes thoroughly, and holds them
in high and loving esteem. Even the most prejudiced reader can hardly
close this book without seeing in these genuine Puritan people a phase
of human life at once fine in its courage, its endurance of terrible
hardships, and not unbeautiful in its childlike acceptance of God’s
dealings and its daily hunger and thirst after righteousness.--_The
Churchman._


THE YOUNG PURITANS OF OLD HADLEY. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. $1.25.

A capital colonial story.--_Congregationalist_, Boston.

She catches the very spirit of Puritan life.--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

The work has historic value as well as unique interest.--LILIAN
WHITING, _in Chicago Inter-Ocean_.

An excellent book for school libraries.--_Literary News_, New York.

The adventures of the boys while hunting, the trapping of wolves
and panthers, which infested the forests in those early days, the
encounters with the Indians, friendly and otherwise, are incidents
which make up a book which will fascinate all young readers.--_San
Francisco Bulletin._

The author has studied her subject carefully; and the pictures of this
life, extinct, yet still blood of our blood and bone of our bone, have
unusual interest.--_Chicago Dial._

Mrs. Smith has proven that she can write as simple and natural a story
of child-life when the scene is laid two hundred and fifty years ago
as when she chooses to describe country life in the New England of the
present century.--_Christian Register._


THE YOUNG PURITANS IN KING PHILIP’S WAR. Illustrated by L. J. BRIDGMAN.
12mo. Cloth. $1.25.

From a letter written the author by Bishop F. D. Huntington, Syracuse,
N. Y.: “Have read all the pages through, every word,--finding the
whole volume readable, entertaining, and satisfactory. Of course I
feel rather competent to say that, in the phraseology, the territorial
descriptions, the geography, the account of customs, language, family
habits, natural phenomena, you are singularly correct, accurate, and
felicitous.”

Mrs. Smith seems to have caught the very breath and echo of those old
days, and she makes one seem not to be merely reading of those Puritans
and their constant struggles with their savage neighbors, but to be
actually beholding them.--_Jersey City Evening Journal._

The history of the seventeenth century in New England would gain new
life when read in the light of such books.--_Christian Endeavor Herald._


THE YOUNG PURITANS IN CAPTIVITY. Illustrated by JESSIE WILLCOX SMITH.
12mo. Cloth. $1.25.

Nothing could be more interesting than the period of which this story
treats, and the author has handled the subject in a manner that is
highly creditable. The reader will be for the nonce a Puritan, and will
follow the adventures of three children taken captive by the Indians,
feeling that he is a participant in the scenes so well portrayed. He
will sleep in the Indians’ wigwam and breathe the odor of the pines.
He will paddle a canoe upon the broad waters of the Connecticut, when
New England was but a wilderness, and get an insight into Indian nature
which he probably never had before.--_Sacramento Bee._

She shows the same power of graphic description, the same faithful use
of the best available material, and the same logical way of putting it
into shape.--_Commercial Advertiser, N. Y._

Mrs. Smith has made history live again in her life-like narrative. The
children of to-day may well learn something of the sterner virtues in
reading this story of the endurance and fortitude of children of two
centuries ago.--_Springfield Republican._


THE YOUNG AND OLD PURITANS OF HATFIELD. Illustrated by BERTHA C. DAY.
12mo. $1.25.


  LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers,
  254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.








End of Project Gutenberg's New Bed-Time Stories, by Louise Chandler Moulton