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Title: The Other Girls

Author: Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

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Language: English

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THE OTHER GIRLS

By

MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY


BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


       *       *       *       *       *

                  By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.

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       *       *       *       *       *


PREFACE.


"Wait until you are helped, my dear! Don't touch the pie until it is
cut!"

The old Mother, Life, keeps saying that to us all.

As individuals, it is well for us to remember it; that we may not
have things until we are helped; at any rate, until the full and
proper time comes, for courageously and with right assurance helping
ourselves.

Yet it is good for _people_, as people, to get a morsel--a
flavor--in advance. It is well that they should be impatient for the
King's supper, to which we shall all sit down, if we will, one day.

So I have not waited for everything to happen and become a usage,
that I have told you of in this little story. I confess that there
are good things in it which have not yet, literally, come to pass. I
have picked something out of the pie beforehand.

I meant, therefore, to have laid all dates aside; especially as I
found myself a little cramped by them, in re-introducing among these
"Other Girls" the girls whom we have before, and rather lately,
known. Lest, possibly, in anything which they have here grown to, or
experienced, or accomplished, the sharply exact reader should seem
to detect the requirement of a longer interval than the almanacs
could actually give, I meant to have asked that it should be
remembered, that we story-tellers write chiefly in the Potential
Mood, and that tenses do not very essentially signify. It will all
have had opportunity to be true in eighteen-seventy-five, if it have
not had in eighteen-seventy-three. Well enough, indeed, if the
prophecies be justified as speedily as the prochronisms will.

The Great Fire, you see, came in and dated it. I could not help
that; neither could I leave the great fact out.

Not any more could I possibly tell what sort of April days we should
have, when I found myself fixed to the very coming April and Easter,
for the closing chapters of my tale. If persistent snow-storms fling
a falsehood in my face, it will be what I have not heretofore
believed possible,--a _white_ one; and we can all think of balmy
Aprils that have been, and that are yet to be.

With these appeals for trifling allowance,--leaving the larger need
to the obvious accounting for in a largeness of subject which no
slight fiction can adequately handle,--I give you leave to turn the
page.

                                                A. D. T. W.
BOSTON, _March_, 1873.




CONTENTS.

 CHAPTER
       I. SPILLED OUT
      II. UP-STAIRS
     III. TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN
      IV. NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT
       V. SPILLED OUT AGAIN
      VI. A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR
     VII. BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW
    VIII. TO HELP: SOMEWHERE
      IX. INHERITANCE
       X. FILLMER AND BYLLES
      XI. CHRISTOFERO
     XII. LETTERS AND LINKS
    XIII. RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE
     XIV. MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL
      XV. BONNY BOWLS
     XVI. RECOMPENSE
    XVII. ERRANDS OF HOPE
   XVIII. BRICKFIELD FARMS
     XIX. BLOSSOMING FERNS
      XX. "WANTED"
     XXI. VOICES AND VISIONS
    XXII. BOX FIFTY-TWO
   XXIII. EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY
    XXIV. TEMPTATION
     XXV. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING
    XXVI. TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'
   XXVII. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM
  XXVIII. "LIVING IN"
    XXIX. WINTERGREEN
     XXX. NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY
    XXXI. CHOSEN: AND CALLED
   XXXII. EASTER LILIES
  XXXIII. KITCHEN CRAMBO
   XXXIV. WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP
    XXXV. HILL-HOPE





THE OTHER GIRLS




CHAPTER I.

SPILLED OUT.


Sylvie Argenter was driving about in her mother's little
basket-phæton.

There was a story about this little basket-phæton, a story, and a
bit of domestic diplomacy.

The story would branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right
here in this first page, let it do. It would tell--taking the little
carriage for a text and key--ever so much about aims and ways and
principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the
busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great
universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things,
as the drifts and sweeps of ocean make up the climates and
atmospheres that wrap and influence the planet.

But the diplomacy had been this:--

"There is one thing, Argie, I should really like Sylvie to have. It
is getting to be almost a necessity, living out of town as we do."

Mr. Argenter's other names were "Increase Muchmore;" but his wife
passed over all that, and called him in the grace of conjugal
intimacy, "Argie."

Increase Muchmore Argenter.

A curious combination; but you need not say it could not have
happened. I have read half a dozen as funny combinations in a single
advertising page of a newspaper, or in a single transit of the city
in a horse-car.

It did not happen altogether without a purpose, either. Mr.
Argenter's father had been fond of money; had made and saved a
considerable sum himself; and always meant that his son should make
and save a good deal more. So he signified this in his cradle and
gave him what he called a lucky name, to begin with. The wife of the
elder Mr. Argenter had been a Muchmore; her only brother had been
named Increase, either out of oddity, such as influenced a certain
Mr. Crabtree whom I have heard of, to call his son Agreen, or
because the old Puritan name had been in the family, or with a like
original inspiration of luck and thrift to that which influenced the
later christening, if you can call it such; and now, therefore,
resulted Increase Muchmore Argenter. The father hung, as it were, a
charm around his son's neck, as Catholics do, giving saints' names
to their children. But young Increase found it, in his earlier
years, rather of the nature of a millstone. It was a good while, for
instance, before Miss Maria Thorndike could make up her mind to take
upon herself such a title. She did not much mind it now. "I.M.
Argenter" was such a good signature at the bottom of a check; and
the surname was quite musical and elegant. "Mrs. Argenter" was all
she had put upon her cards. There was no other Mrs. Argenter to be
confounded with. The name stood by itself in the Directory. All the
rest of the Argenters were away down in Maine in Poggowantimoc.

"Living out of town as we do." Mrs. Argenter always put that in. It
was the nut that fastened all her screws of argument.

"Away out here as we are, we _must_ keep an expert cook, you know;
we can't send out for bread and cake, and salads and soups, on an
emergency, as we did in town." "We _must_ have a seamstress in the
house the year round; it is such a bother driving about a ten-mile
circuit after one in a hurry;" and now,--"Sylvie _ought_ to have a
little vehicle of her own, she is so far away from all her friends;
no running in and out and making little daily plans, as girls do in
a neighborhood. All the girls of her class have their own
pony-chaises now; it is a part of the plan of living."

"It isn't any part of _my_ plan," said Mr. Argenter, who had his
little spasms of returning to old-fashioned ideas he was brought up
in, but had long ago practically deserted; and these spasms mostly
took him, it must be said, in response to new propositions of Mrs.
Argenter's. His own plans evolved gradually; he came to them by
imperceptible steps of mental process, or outward constraint; Mrs.
Argenter's "jumped" at him, took him at unawares, and by sudden
impinging upon solid shield of permanent judgment struck out sparks
of opposition. She could not very well help that. He never had time
to share her little experiences, and interests, and perplexities,
and so sympathize with her as she went along, and up to the agreeing
and consenting point.

"I won't set her up with any such absurdities," said Mr. Argenter.
"It's confounded ruinous shoddy nonsense. Makes little fools of them
all. Sylvie's got airs enough now. It won't do for her to think she
can have everything the Highfords do."

"It isn't that," said Mrs. Argenter, sweetly. Her position, and the
soft "g" in her name, giving her a sense of something elegant and
gentle-bred to be always sustained and acted up to, had really
helped and strengthened Mrs. Argenter in very much of her
established amiability. We don't know, always, where our ties and
braces really are. We are graciously allowed many a little temporary
stay whose hold cannot be quite directly raced to the everlasting
foundations.

"It isn't _that_; I don't care for the Highfords, particularly.
Though I do like to have Sylvie enjoy things as she sees them
enjoyed all around her, in her own circle. But it's the convenience;
and then, it's a real means of showing kindness. She can so often
ask other girls, you know, to drive with her; girls who haven't
pony-chaises."

"_Showing_ kindness, yes; you've just hit it there. But it isn't
always _fun to the frogs_, Mrs. A.!"

Now if Mrs. Argenter disliked one thing more than another, that her
husband ever did, it was his calling her "Mrs. A.;" and I am very
much afraid, I was going to say, that he knew it; but of course he
did when she had mildly told him so, over and over,--I am afraid he
_recollected_ it, at this very moment, and others similar.

"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Argenter," she said, with some
quiet coldness.

"I mean, I know how she takes _other_ girls to ride; she _sets them
down at the small gray house,--the house without any piazza or bay
window, Michael_!" and Mr. Argenter laughed. That was the order he
had heard Sylvie give one day when he had come up with his own
carriage at the post-office in the village, whither he had walked
over for exercise and the evening papers. Sylvie had Aggie Townsend
with her, and she put her head out at the window on one side just as
her father passed on the other, and directed Michael, with a very
elegant nonchalance, to "set this little girl down" as aforesaid.
Mr. Argenter had been half amused and half angry. The anger passed
off, but he had kept up the joke.

"O, do let that old story alone," exclaimed Mrs. Argenter. "Sylvie
will soon outgrow all that. If you want to make her a real lady,
there is nothing like letting her get thoroughly used to having
things."

"I don't intend her to get used to having a pony-chaise," Mr.
Argenter said very quietly and shortly. "If she wants to 'show a
kindness,' and take 'other' girls to ride, there's the slide-top
buggy and old Scrub. She may have that as often as she pleases."

And Mrs. Argenter knew that this ended--or had better end--the
conversation.

For that time. Sylvie Argenter did get used to having a pony-chaise,
after all. Her mother waited six months, until the pleasant summer
weather, when her friends began to come out from the city to spend
days with her, or to take early teas, and Michael had to be sent
continually to meet and leave them at the trains. Then she began
again, and asked for a pony-chaise for herself. To "save the cost of
it in Michael's time, and the wear and tear of the heavy carriages.
Those little sunset drives would be such a pleasure to her, just
when Michael had to be milking and putting up for the night." Mr.
Argenter had forgotten all about the other talk, Sylvie's name now
being not once mentioned; and the end of it was that a pretty little
low phæton was added to the Argenter equipages, and that Sylvie's
mother was always lending it to her.

So Sylvie was driving about in it this afternoon. She had been over
to West Dorbury to see the Highfords, and was coming round by
Ingraham's Corner, to stop there and buy one of his fresh big loaves
of real brown bread for her father's tea. It was a little unspoken,
politic understanding between Sylvie and her mother, that some
small, acceptable errand like this was to be accomplished whenever
the former had the basket-phæton of an afternoon. By quiet, unspoken
demonstration, Mr. Argenter was made to feel in his own little
comforts what a handy thing it was to have a daughter flitting about
so easily with a pony-carriage.

But there was something else to be accomplished this time that
Sylvie had not thought of, and that when it happened, she felt with
some dismay might not be quite offset and compensated for by the
Ingraham brown bread.

Rod Sherrett was out too, from Roxeter, Young-Americafying with his
tandem; trying, to-day, one of his father's horses with his own Red
Squirrel, to make out the team; for which, if he should come to any
grief, Rodgers, the coachman, would have to bear responsibility for
being persuaded to let Duke out in such manner.

Just as Sylvie Argenter drew up her pony at the baker's door, Rod
Sherrett came spinning round the corner in grand style. But Duke was
not used to tandem harness, and Red Squirrel, put ahead, took flying
side-leaps now and then on his own account; and Duke, between his
comrade's escapades and his driver's checks and admonitions, was to
that degree perplexed in his mind and excited off his well-bred
balance, that he was by this time becoming scarcely more reliable in
the shafts. Rod found he had his hands full. He found this out,
however, only just in time to realize it, as they were suddenly
relieved and emptied of their charge; for, before his call and the
touch of his long whip could bring back Red Squirrel into line at
this turn, he had sprung so far to the left as to bring Duke and the
"trap" down upon the little phæton. There was a lock and a crash; a
wheel was off the phæton, the tandem was overturned, Sylvie
Argenter, in the act of alighting, was thrown forward over the
threshold of the open shop-door, Rod Sherrett was lying in the road,
a man had seized the pony, and Duke and Red Squirrel were shattering
away through the scared Corner Village, with the wreck at their
heels.

Sylvie's arm was bruised, and her dress torn; that was all. She felt
a little jarred and dizzy at first, when Mr. Ingraham lifted her up,
and Rodney Sherrett, picking himself out of the dust with a shake
and a stamp, found his own bones unbroken, and hurried over to ask
anxiously--for he was a kind-hearted fellow--how much harm he had
done, and to express his vehement regret at the "horrid spill."

Rod Sherrett and Sylvie Argenter had danced together at the Roxeter
Assemblies, and the little Dorbury "Germans;" they had boated, and
picknicked, and skated in company, but to be tumbled together into a
baker's shop, torn and frightened, and dusty,--each feeling, also,
in a great scrape,--this was an odd and startling partnership.
Sylvie was pale; Rod was sorry; both were very much demolished as to
dress: Sylvie's hat had got a queer crush, and a tip that was never
intended over her eyes; Rodney's was lying in the street, and his
hair was rumpled and curiously powdered. When they had stood and
looked at each other an instant after the first inquiry and reply,
they both laughed. Then Rodney shrugged his shoulders, and walked
over and picked up his hat.

"It might have been worse," he said, coming back, as Mr. Ingraham
and the man who had held Sylvie's pony took the latter out of the
shafts and led him to a post to fasten him, and then proceeded
together, as well as they could, to lift the disabled phæton and
roll it over to the blacksmith's shop to be set right.

"You'll be all straight directly," he said, "and I'm only thankful
you're not much hurt. But I _am_ in a mess. Whew! What the old
gentleman will say if Duke don't come out of it comfortable, is
something I'd rather not look ahead to. I must go on and see. I'll
be back again, and if there's anything--anything _more_," he added
with a droll twinkle, "that I can do for you, I shall be happy, and
will try to do it a little better."

The feminine Ingrahams were all around Sylvie by this time: Mrs.
Ingraham, and Ray, and Dot. They bemoaned and exclaimed, and were
"thankful she'd come off as she had;" and "she'd better step right
in and come up-stairs." The village boys were crowding round,--all
those who had not been in time to run after the "smash,"--and Sylvie
gladly withdrew to the offered shelter. Rod Sherrett gave his hair a
toss or two with his hands, struck the dust off his wide-awake, put
it on, and walked off down the hill, through the staring and
admiring crowd.




CHAPTER II.

UP-STAIRS.


The two Ingraham girls had been sitting in their own room over the
shop when the accident occurred, and it was there they now took
Sylvie Argenter, to have her dress tacked together again, and to
wash her face and hands and settle her hair and hat. Mrs. Ingraham
came bustling after with "arnicky" for the bruised arm. They were
all very delighted and important, having the great Mr. Argenter's
daughter quite to themselves in the intimacy of "up-stairs," to wait
upon and take care of. Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good
deal; her daughters took it with more outward calmness. Although
baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation,
born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and
universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of
society out of the Roxeter town library.

There was a good deal of time after the bathing and mending and
re-arranging were all done. The axle of the phæton had been split,
and must be temporarily patched up and banded. There was nothing for
Sylvie to do but to sit quietly there in the old-fashioned,
dimity-covered easy-chair which they gave her by the front window,
and wait. Meanwhile, she observed and wondered much.

She had never got out of the Argenter and Highford atmosphere
before. She didn't know--as we don't about the moon--whether there
might _be_ atmosphere for the lesser and subsidiary world. But here
she found herself in the bedroom of two girls who lived over a
bake-shop, and, really, it seemed they actually _did_ live, much
after the fashion of other people. There were towels on the stand, a
worked pincushion on the toilet, white shades and red tassels to the
windows, this comfortable easy-chair beside one and a low splint
rocker in the other,--with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of
dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each,--white quilted
covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted
foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower end
of the bed.

She had never thought of there being anything at Ingraham's Corner
but a shop on a dusty street, with, she supposed,--only she never
really supposed about it,--some sort of places, behind and above it,
under the same roof, for the people to get away into when they
weren't selling bread, to cook, and eat, and sleep, she had never
exactly imagined how, but of course not as they did in real houses
that were not shops. And when Mrs. Ingraham, who had bustled off
down-stairs, came shuffling up again as well as she could with both
hands full and her petticoats in her way, and appeared bearing a cup
of hot tea and a plate of spiced gingerbread,--the latter _not_ out
of the shop, but home-made, and out of her own best parlor
cupboard,--she perceived almost with bewilderment, that cup and
plate were of spotless china, and the spoon was of real, worn,
bright silver. She might absolutely put these things to her own lips
without distaste or harm.

"It'll do you good after your start," said kindly Mrs. Ingraham.

The difference came in with the phraseology. A silver spoon is a
silver spoon, but speech cannot be rubbed up for occasion. Sylvie
thought she must mean _before_ her start, about which she was
growing anxious.

"O, I'm sorry you should have taken so much trouble," she exclaimed.
"I wonder if the phæton will be ready soon?"

"Mr. Ingraham he's got back," replied the lady. "He says Rylocks'll
be through with it in about half an hour. Don't you be a mite
concerned. Jest set here and drink your tea, and rest. Dot, I guess
you'd as good's come down-stairs. I shall be wantin' you with them
fly nets. Your father's fetched home the frames."

Ray Ingraham sat in the side window, and crocheted thread
edging,--of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned
together in a white ball upon her lap,--while Sylvie sipped her tea.

The side window looked out into a shady little garden-spot, in the
front corner of which grew a grand old elm, which reached around
with beneficent, beautiful branches, and screened also a part of the
street aspect. Seen from within, and from under these great, green,
swaying limbs,--the same here in the village as out in free field or
forest,--the street itself seemed less dusty, less common, less
impossible to pause upon for anything but to buy bread, or mend a
wheel, or get a horse shod.

"How different it is, in behind!" said Sylvie, speaking out
involuntarily.

Ray shot a quick look at her from her bright dark eyes.

"I suppose it is,--almost everywheres," she answered. "I've got
turned round so, sometimes, with people and places, until they never
seemed the same again."

If Ray had not said "everywheres," Sylvie would not have been
reminded; but that word sent her, in recollection, out to the
house-front and the shop-sign again. Ray knew better; she was a
good scholar, but she heard her mother and others like her talk
vernacular every day. It was a wonder she shaded off from it as
delicately as she did.

Ray Ingraham, or Rachel,--for that was her name, and her sister's
was Dorothy, though these had been shortened into two as charming,
pet little appellatives as could have been devised by the most
elegant intention,--was a pretty girl, with her long-lashed,
quick-glancing dark eyes, her hair, that crimped naturally and fell
off in a deep, soft shadow from her temples, her little mouth,
neatly dimpled in, and the gypsy glow of her clear, bright skin. Dot
was different: she was dark too, not _so_ dark; her eyes were full,
brilliant gray, with thick, short lashes; she was round and
comfortable: nose, cheeks, chin, neck, waist, hands; her mouth was
large, with white teeth that showed easily and broadly, instead of,
like Ray's, with just a quiver and a glimmer. She was like her
mother. She looked the smart, buxom, common-sense village girl to
perfection. Ray had the hint of something higher and more delicate
about her, though she had the trigness, and readiness, and
every-day-ness too.

Sylvie sat silent after this, and looked at her, wondering, more
than she had wondered about the furniture. Thinking, "how many girls
there were in the world! All sorts--everywhere! What did they all
do, and find to care for?" These were not the "other" girls of whom
her mother had blandly said that she could show kindnesses by taking
them to drive. Those were such as Aggie Townsend, the navy captain's
widow's daughter,--nice, but poor; girls whom everybody noticed, of
course, but who hadn't it in their power to notice anybody. That
made such a difference! These were _otherer_ yet! And for all that
they were girls,--girls! Ever so much of young life, and glow, and
companionship, ever so much of dream, and hope, and possible story,
is in just that little plural of five letters. A company of girls!
Heaven only knows what there is _not_ represented, and suggested,
and foreshadowed there!

Sylvie Argenter, with all her nonsense, had a way of putting
herself, imaginatively, into other people's places. She used to tell
her mother, when she was a little child and said her hymns,--which
Mrs. Argenter, not having any very fresh, instant spiritual life, I
am afraid, out of which to feed her child, chose for her in dim
remembrance of what had been thought good for herself when she was
little,--that she "didn't know exactly as she _did_ 'thank the
goodness and the grace that on her birth had smiled.'" She "should
like pretty well to have been a little--Lapland girl with a sledge;
or--a Chinese; or--a kitchen girl; a little while, I mean!"

She had a way of intimacy with the servants which Mrs. Argenter
found it hard to check. She liked to get into Jane's room when she
was "doing herself up" of an afternoon, and look over her cheap
little treasures in her band-box and chest-drawer. She made especial
love to a carnelian heart, and a twisted gold ring with two clasped
hands on it.

"I think it's real nice to have only _two_ or _three_ things, and to
'clean yourself up,' and to have a 'Sunday out!'" she said.

Mrs. Argenter was anxiously alarmed at the child's low tastes. Yet
these were very practicably compatible with the alternations of
importance in being driven about in her father's barouche, taking
Aggie Townsend up on the road, and "setting her down at the small
gray house."

Sylvie thought, this afternoon, looking at Ray Ingraham, in her
striped lilac and white calico, with its plaited waist and
cross-banded, machine-stitched double skirt, sitting by her shady
window, beyond which, behind the garden angle, rose up the red brick
wall of the bakehouse, whence came a warm, sweet smell of many
new-drawn loaves,--looking around within, at the snug tidiness of
the simple room, and even out at the street close by, with its stir
and curious interest, yet seen from just as real a shelter as she
had in her own chamber at home,--that it might really be nice to be
a baker's daughter and live in the village,--"when it wasn't your
own fault, and you couldn't help it."

Ray nodded to some one out of her window.

Sylvie saw a bright color come up in her cheeks, and a sparkle into
her eyes as she did so, while a little smile, that she seemed to
think was all to herself, crept about her mouth and lingered at the
dimpled corners. There was an expression as if she hid herself quite
away in some consciousness of her own, from any recollection of the
strange girl sitting by.

The strange girl glanced from _her_ window, and saw a young
carpenter with his box of tools go past under the elm, with some
sort of light subsiding also in like manner from his face. He was in
his shirt sleeves,--but the sleeves were white,--and his straw hat
was pushed back from his forehead, about which brown curls lay damp
with heat. Sylvie did not believe he had even touched his hat, when
he had looked up through the friendly elm boughs and bowed to the
village girl in her shady corner. His hands were full, of course.
Such people's hands were almost always full. That was the reason
they did not learn such things. But how cute it had been of Ray
Ingraham _not_ to sit in the front window! He was certain to come
by, too, she supposed. To be sure; that was the street. Ray Ingraham
would not have cared to live up a long avenue, to wait for people to
come on purpose, in carriages.

She got as far as this in her thinkings, at the same moment that she
came to the bottom of her cup of tea. And then she caught a glimpse
of Rylocks, rolling the phæton across from the smithy.

"What a funny time I have had! And how kind you have all been!" she
said, getting up. "I am ever so much obliged, Miss Ingraham. I
wonder"--and then, suddenly, she thought it might not be quite civil
to wonder.

Ray Ingraham laughed.

"So do I!" she said quickly, with a bright look. She knew well
enough what Sylvie stopped at.

Each of these two girls wondered if there would ever be any more
"getting in behind" for them, as regarded each other, in their two
different lives.

As Sylvie Argenter came out at the shop-door, Rodney Sherrett
appeared at the same point, safely mounted on the runaway Duke. The
team had been stopped below at the river; he had found a stable and
a saddle, had left Red Squirrel and the broken vehicle to be sent
for, and was going home, much relieved and assured by being able to
present himself upon his father's favorite roadster, whole in bones
and with ungrazed skin.

The street boys stood round again, as he dismounted to make fresh
certainty of Sylvie's welfare, handed her into her phæton, and then,
springing to the saddle, rode away beside her, down the East Dorbury
road.

Mrs. Argenter was sitting with her worsted work in the high,
many-columned terrace piazza which gave grandeur to the great
show-house that Mr. Argenter had built some five years since, when
Sylvie, with Rod Sherrett beside her, came driving up the long
avenue, or, as Mrs. Argenter liked to call it, out of the English
novels, the _approach_. She laid back her canvas and wools into the
graceful Fayal basket-stand, and came down the first flight of stone
steps to meet them.

"How late you are, Sylvie! I had begun to be quite worried," she
said, when Sylvie dropped the reins around the dasher and stood up
in the low carriage, nodding at her mother. She felt quite brave and
confident about the accident, now that Rodney Sherrett had come all
the way with her to the very door, to account for it and to help her
out with the story.

Rodney lifted his hat to the lady.

"We've had a great spill, Mrs. Argenter. All my fault, and Red
Squirrel's. Miss Argenter has brought home more than I have from the
_mêlée_. I started with a tandem, and here I am with only Gray Duke
and a borrowed saddle. It was out at Ingraham's Corner,--a quick
turn, you know,--and Miss Argenter had just stopped when Squirrel
sprang round upon her. My trap is pretty much into kindlings, but
there are no bones broken. You must let me send Rodgers round on his
way to town to-morrow, to take the phæton to the builder's. It wants
a new axle. I'm awful sorry; but after all"--with a bright
smile,--"I can't think it altogether an ill wind,--for _me_, at any
rate. I couldn't help enjoying the ride home."

"I don't believe you could help enjoying the whole of it, except
the very minute of the tip-out itself, before you knew," said
Sylvie, laughing.

"Well, it _was_ a lark; but the worst is coming. I've got to go home
all alone. I wish you'd come and tell the tale for _me_, Miss
Sylvie. I shouldn't be half so afraid!"




CHAPTER III.

TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN.


The seven o'clock morning train was starting from Dorbury Upper
Village.

Early business men, mechanics, clerks, shop-girls, sewing-girls,
office-boys,--these made up the list of passengers. Except, perhaps,
some travellers now and then, bound for a first express from Boston,
or an excursion party to take a harbor steamer for a day's trip to
Nantasket or Nahant.

Did you ever contrast one of these trains--when perhaps you were
such traveller or excursionist--with the after, leisurely,
comfortable one at ten or eleven; when gentlemen who only need to be
in the city through banking hours, and ladies bent on calls or
elegant shopping, come chatting and rustling to their seats, and
hold a little drawing-room exchange in the twenty-five minutes'
trip?

If you have,--and if you have a little sympathetic imagination that
fills out hints,--you have had a glimpse of some of these "other
girls" and the thing that daily living is to them, with which my
story means to concern itself.

Have you noticed the hats, with the rose or the feather behind or at
top, scrupulously according to the same dictate of style that rules
alike for seven and ten o'clock, but which has often to be worn
through wet and dry till the rose has been washed by too many a
shower, and the feather blown by too many a dusty wind, to stand for
anything but a sign that she knows what should be where, if she
only had it to put there? Have you seen the cheap alpacas, in two
shades, sure to fade in different ways and out of kindred with each
other, painfully looped in creasing folds, very much sat upon, but
which would not by any means resign themselves to simple smoothed
straightness, while silks were hitched and crisp Hernanis puffed?

Yet the alpacas, and all their innumerable cousinhood, have also
their first mornings of fresh gloss, when the newness of the counter
is still upon them; there is a youth for all things; a first time, a
charm that seems as if it might last, though we know it neither will
nor was meant to; if it would, or were, the counters might be taken
down. And people who wear gowns that are creased and faded, have
each, one at a time, their days of glory, when they begin again. The
farther apart they come, perhaps the more of the spring-time there
is in them.

Marion Kent bloomed out this clear, sweet, clean summer morning in a
span new tea-colored zephyrine polonaise with three little frills
edged with tiny brown braid, which set it off trimly with the due
contrasting depth of color, and cost nearly nothing except the
stitches and the kerosene she burned late in the hot July nights in
her only time for finishing it. She had covered her little old
curled leaf of a hat with a tea-colored corner that had been left,
and puffed it up high and light to the point of the new style, with
brown veil tissue that also floated off in an abundant cloudy grace
behind; and she had such an air of breezy and ecstatic elegance as
she came beaming and hastening into the early car, that nobody
really looked down to see that the underskirt was the identical
black brilliantine that had done service all the spring in the
dismal mornings of waterproofs and india-rubbers and general damp
woolen smells and blue nips and shivers.

Marion Kent always made you think of things that never at all
belonged to her. She gave you an impression of something that she
seemed to stand for, which she could not wholly be. Her zephyrine,
with its silky shine, hinted at the real lustres of far more costly
fabrics; her hat, perked up with puffs of grenadine (how all these
things do rhyme and repeat their little Frenchy tags of endings!)
put you in mind of lace and feathers, and a general float and
flutter of gay millinery; her step and expression, as she came
airily into this second-rate old car, put on for the "journeymen"
train, brought up a notion, almost, of some ball-room advent,
flushed and conscious and glad with the turning of all admiring eyes
upon it; her face, even, without being absolutely beautiful,
sparkled out at you a certain will and force and intent of beauty
that shot an idea or suggestion of brilliant prettiness instantly
through your unresisting imagination, compelling you to fill out
whatever was wanting; and what more, can you explain, do feature and
bearing that come nearest to perfect fulfillment effect?

The middle-aged cabinet-maker looked over his newspaper at her as
she came in; he had little daughters of his own growing up to
girlhood, and there might have been some thought in his head not
purely admiring; but still he looked up. The knot of office-boys,
crowding and skylarking across a couple of seats, stopped their
shuffle and noise for a second, and one said, "My! ain't she
stunning?" A young fellow, rather spruce in his own way also, with
precise necktie, deep paper cuffs and dollar-store studs and initial
sleeve-buttons, touched his hat with an air of taking credit to
himself, as she glanced at him; and another, in a sober old gray
suit, with only a black ribbon knotted under his linen collar,
turned slightly the other way as she approached, and with something
like a frown between his brows, looked out of the window at a
wood-pile.

Marion's cheeks were a tint brighter, and her white teeth seemed to
flash out a yet more determined smile, as, passing him by, she
seated herself with friendly bustle among some girls a little behind
him.

"In again, Marion?" said one. "I thought you'd left."

"Only in for a transient," said Marion, with a certain clear tone
that reminded one of the stage-trainer's direction to "speak to the
galleries." "Nellie Burton is sick, and Lufton sent for me. I'll do
for a month or so, and like it pretty well; then I shall have a
tiff, I suppose, and fling it up again; I can't stand being ordered
round longer than that."

"Or longer than the _new_ lasts," said the other slyly, touching the
drapery sleeve of the zephyrine. "It _is_ awful pretty, Marry!"

"Yes, and while the new lasts Lufton'll be awful polite," returned
Marion. "He likes to see his girls look stylish, I can tell you.
When things begin to shab out, then the snubbing begins. And how
they're going to help shabbing out I should like to know, dragging
round amongst the goods and polishing against the counters? and
who's going to afford ready-made, or pay for sewing, out of six
dollars a week and cars and dinners, let alone regular board, that
some of 'em have to take off? Why there isn't enough left for shoes!
No wonder Lufton's always changing. Well--there's one good of it!
You can always get a temporary there. Save up a month and then put
into port and refit. That's the way I do."

"But what does it come to, after all's said and done? and what if
you hadn't the port?" asked Hannah Upshaw, the girl with the shawl
on, who never wore suits.

Marion Kent shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't know, yet. I take things as they come to me. I don't
pretend to calculate for anybody else. I know one thing, though,
there is other things to be done,--and it isn't sewing-machines
either, if you can once get started. And when I can see my way
clear, I mean to start. See if I don't!"

The train stopped at the Pomantic station. The young man in the gray
clothes rose up, took something from under the car-seat and went
out. What he had with him was a carpenter's box. It was the same
youth who had greeted Ray Ingraham from beneath the elm branches. As
the train got slowly under way again, Marion looked straight out at
her window into Frank Sunderline's face, and bowed,--very modestly
and sweetly bowed. He was waiting for that instant on the platform,
until the track should be clear and he could cross.

What he caught in Marion's look, as she turned it full upon him,
nobody could see; but there was a quieter earnest in it, certainly,
when she turned back; and the young man had responded to her
salutation with a relaxing glance of friendly pleasantness that
seemed more native to his face than the frown of a few minutes
before.

Marion Kent had several selves; several relations, at any rate, into
which she could put herself with others. I think she showed young
Sunderline, for that instant, out of gentler, questioning, almost
beseeching eyes, a something she could not show to the whole
car-full with whom at the moment of her entrance she had been in
rapport, through frills and puffs and flutters, into which she had
allowed her consciousness to pass. Behind the little window he could
only see a face; a face quieted down from its gay flippancy; a face
that showed itself purposely and simply to him; eyes that said,
"What was that you thought of me just now? _Don't_ think it!"

They were old neighbors and child-friends. They had grown up
together; had they been growing away from each other in some things
since they had been older? Often it appeared so; but it was Marion
chiefly who seemed to change; then, all at once, in some unspoken
and intangible way, for a moment like this, she seemed to come
suddenly back again, or he seemed to catch a glimpse of that in her,
hidden, not altered, which _might_ come back one of these days. Was
it a glimpse, perhaps, like the sight the Lord has of each one of
us, always?

Meanwhile, what of Ray Ingraham?

Ray Ingraham was sweet, and proper, and still; just what Frank
Sunderline thought was prettiest and nicest for a woman to be. He
was always reminded by her ways of what it would be so pretty and
nice for Marion Kent to be. But Marion _would_ sparkle; and it is so
hard to be still and sparkle too. He liked the brightness and the
airiness; a little of it, near to; he did not like a whole car-full,
or room-full, or street full,--he did not like to see a woman
sparkle all round.

Mr. Ingraham had come into Dorbury Upper Village some half dozen
years since; had leased the bakery, house, and shop; and two years
afterward, Rachel had come home to stay. She had been left in Boston
with her grandmother when the family had moved out of the city, that
she might keep on a while with the school that she was used to and
stood so well in; with her Chapel classes, also, where she heard
literature and history lectures, each once a week. Ray could not
bear to leave them, nor to give up her Sunday lessons in the dear
old Mission Rooms. Dot was three years younger; she could begin
again anywhere, and their mother could not spare both. Besides,
"what Ray got she could always be giving to Dot afterwards." That is
not so easy, and by no means always follows. Dot turned out the
mother's girl,--the girl of the village, as was said; practical,
comfortable, pleasant, capable, sensible. Ray was something of all
these, with a touch of more; alive in a higher nature, awakened to
receive through upper channels, sensitive to some things that
neither pleased nor troubled Mrs. Ingraham and Dot.

It took a good while to come to know a girl like Ray Ingraham; most
of her young acquaintance felt the _step up_ that they must take to
stand fairly beside her, or come intimately near. Frank Sunderline
felt it too, in certain ways, and did not suppose that she could see
in him more than he saw in himself: a plain fellow, good at his
trade, or going to be; bright enough to know brightness in other
people when he came across it, and with enough of what, independent
of circumstances, goes to the essential making of a gentleman, to
perceive and be attracted by the delicate gentleness that makes a
lady.

That was just what Ray Ingraham did see; only he hardly set it down
in his self-estimate at its full value.

Do you perceive, story-reader, story-raveller, that Frank Sunderline
was not quite in love with either of these girls? Do you see that it
is not a matter of course that he should be?

I can tell you, you girls who make a romance out of the first word,
and who can tell from the first chapter how it will all end, that
you will make great mistakes if you go to interpreting life
so,--your own, or anybody's else.

I can tell you that men--those who are good for very much--come
often more slowly to their life-conclusions than you think; that
woman-_nature_ is a good deal to a man, and is meant to be, in
gradual bearing and influence, in the shaping of his perception, the
working of comparison, the coming to an understanding of his own
want, and the forming of his ideal,--yes, even in the mere general
pleasantness and gentle use of intercourse--before the _individual_
woman reveals herself, slowly or suddenly, as the one only central
need, and motive, and reward, and satisfying, that the world holds
and has kept for him. For him to gain or to lose: either way, to
have mightily to do with that soul-forging and shaping that the
Lord, in his handling of every man, is about.

That night they all came out together in the last train. Ray
Ingraham had gone in after dinner to make some purchases for her
mother, and had been to see some Chapel friends. Marion, as she came
in through the gate at the station, saw her far before, walking up
the long platform to the cars. She watched her enter the second in
the line, and hastened on, making up her mind instantly, like a
field general, to her own best manoeuvre. It was not exactly what
every girl would have done; and therein showed her generalship. She
would get into the same carriage, and take a seat with her. She knew
very well that Frank Sunderline would jump on at Pomantic, his day's
work just done. If he came and spoke to Ray he should speak also to
her. She did not risk trying _which_ he would come and speak to. It
should be, that joining them, and finding it pleasant, he should
not quite know which, after all, had most made it so. Different as
they were, she and Ray Ingraham toned and flavored each other, and
Marion knew it. They were like rose-color and gray; or like spice
and salt: you did not stop to think which ruled the taste, or which
your eye separately rested on. Something charming, delicious,
resulted of their being together; they set each other off, and
helped each other out. Then it was something that Frank Sunderline
should see that Ray would let her be her friend; that she was not
altogether too loud and pronounced for her. Ray did not turn aside
and look at wood-piles, and get rid of her.

Furthermore, the way home from the Dorbury depot, for Frank and
Marion both, lay _past_ the bakery, on down the under-hill road.

Marion did not _think out_ a syllable of all this; she grasped the
situation, and she acted in an instant. I told you she acted like a
general in the field: perhaps neither she nor the general would be
as skillful, always, with the maps and compasses, and time to plan
beforehand. I do not think Marion _was_ ever very wise in her
fore-thoughts.

Beyond Pomantic, the next one or two stations took off a good many
passengers, so that they had their part of the car almost to
themselves. Frank Sunderline had come in and taken a place upon the
other side; now he moved over into the seat behind them, accosting
them pleasantly, but not interrupting the conversation which had
been busily going on between them all the way. Ray was really
interested in some things Marion had brought up to notice; her face
was intent and thoughtful; perhaps she was not quite so pretty when
she was set thinking; her dimples were hidden; but Marion was
beaming, exhilarated partly by her own talk, somewhat by an honest,
if half mischievous earnestness in her subject, and very much also
by the consciousness of the young mechanic opposite, within
observing and listening distance. Marion could not help talking over
her shoulders, more or less, always.

"Men take the world in the rough, and do the work; women help, and
come in for the finishing off," said Rachel, just as Frank
Sunderline changed his place and joined them. "_We_ could not handle
those, for instance," she said, with a shy, quiet sign toward the
carpenter's tools, and lowering her already gentle voice.

"Men break in the fields, and plough, and sow, and mow; and women
ride home on the loads,--is that it?" said Marion, laughing, and
snatching her simile from a hay-field with toppling wagons, that the
train was at that moment skimming by. "Well, may be! All is, I shall
look out for my ride. After things _are_ broken in, I don't see why
we shouldn't get the good of it."

"Value is what things stand for, or might procure, isn't it?" said
Ray, turning to Sunderline, and taking him frankly and friendlily
into the conversation.

"No fair!" cried Marion. "He doesn't understand the drift of it. Do
you, see, Mr. Sunderline, why a man should be paid any more than a
woman, for standing behind a counter and measuring off the same
goods, or at a desk and keeping the same accounts? I don't! That's
what I'm complaining of."

"That's the complaint of the day, I know," said Sunderline. "And no
doubt there's a good deal of special unfairness that needs righting,
and will get it. But things don't come to be as they are quite
without a reason, either. There's a principle in it, you've got to
look back to that."

"Well?" said Marion, gleefully interrogatory, and settling herself
with an air of attention, and of demurely giving up the floor. She
was satisfied to listen, if only Frank Sunderline would talk.

"I believe I see what you meant," he said to Ray. "About the values
that things stand for. A man represents a certain amount of power in
the world."

"O, does he?" put in Marion, with an indescribable inflection. "I'm
glad to know."

"He _could_ be doing some things that a woman could not do at
all--was never meant to do. He stands for so much force. You may
apply things as you please, but if you don't use them according to
their relative capacity, the unused value has to be paid
for--somewhere."

"That's a nice principle!" said Marion. "I like that I should like
to be paid for what I _might_ be good for!"

Frank Sunderline laughed.

"It's a good principle; because by it things settle themselves, in
the long run. You may take mahogany or pine to make a table, and one
will answer the common convenience of a table as well as the other;
but you will learn not to take mahogany when the pine will serve the
purpose. You will keep it for what the pine wouldn't be fit for;
which wouldn't come to pass if the pine weren't cheapest. Women
wouldn't get those places to tend counters and keep books, if the
world hadn't found out that it was poor economy, as a general rule,
to take men for it."

"But what do you say about mental power? About pay for teaching, for
instance?" asked Ray.

"Why, you're coming round to _my_ side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should
really like to know _where_ you are?"

"I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray,
smiling.

"That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is
getting righted. Women _are_ being paid more, in proportion, for
intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental
power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who
writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good
statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where _time_ is
paid for,--where it is personal service,--the old principle at the
root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the
seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the
nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, _make
way_ for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come
afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be
counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these
women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital
draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily
_oppression_ by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I
think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege."

"Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims,
they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion.

"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a
world ready made to knock round _in_, don't they? And it is because
there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that
they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances
are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the
question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the
fact that first conditions may come back any day,--do come back,
here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the
primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the
woman is what Scripture calls her,--the helpmeet. And my notion is
that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock
round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think
Providence has been very much interfered with."

"There are widows," said Rachel, gently.

"Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to
care for. I said--if things were right. I wish the energy was spent
in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the
wrong."

"They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said
Marion, squarely.

"I guess not--for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline;
and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender.

He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and
they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on
without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her
odd fashion,--

"Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and
comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and
fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge."

"The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think
very likely I could be--a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she
added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed
to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread."

A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke,
from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends
of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm.

As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put
the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The
doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and
weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps,
without speaking.

"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her
as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and
knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!"

But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward
the side door, through the yard, under the elm.

A neighborly looking woman--such a woman as always "steps in" on an
emergency--met her at the entrance. "He's dreadful sick, I'm afraid,
dear," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray's
shoulder. "The doctor's up-stairs; ben there an hour. And I believe
my soul every identical child in the village's ben sent in for a
brick loaf."

Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road. The
conversation was broken off. It was a startling occurrence that had
interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn
aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something
that one was most anxious to say. A very little straw will do it. It
is like a game at croquet. The ball you want to hit lies close; but
it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be
allowed your strike the whole attitude and aspect are changed.
Nothing lies where it did a minute before. You yourself are driven
off, and forced into different combinations.

Marion wanted to try Sunderline with certain new notions--certain
half-purposes of her own, in the latter part of this walk they would
have together. Everything had led nicely up to it; when here, just
at the moment of her opportunity, it became impossible to go on from
where they were. An event had thrust itself in. It was not seemly to
disregard it. They could not help thinking of the Ingrahams. And
yet, "if it would have done," Marion Kent could have put off her
sympathies, made her own little point, and then gone back to the
sympathies again, just as really and truly, ten minutes afterward.
They would have kept. Why are things jostled up so?

"I am sorry for Ray," she said, presently.

Frank Sunderline, with a grave look, nodded his head thoughtfully,
twice.

"If anything happens to Mr. Ingraham, won't it be strange that I
should have asked her what I did, just that minute?"

"What? O, yes!"

It had fairly been jostled out of the young man's mind. They walked
on silently again. But Marion could not give it up.

"I don't doubt she _would_ be a baker; carry on the whole
concern,--if there was money. She keeps all her father's accounts,
now."

"Does she?"

"She wouldn't have had the chance if there had been a boy. That's
what I say isn't fair."

"I think you are mistaken. You can't change the way of the world.
There isn't anything to hinder a woman's doing work like that,--even
going on with it, as you say,--when it is set for her by special
circumstances. It's natural, and a duty; and the world will treat
her well and think the more of her. Things are so that it is
getting easier every day for it to be done. The facilities of the
times can't help serving women as much as men. But people won't
generally bring up their daughters to the work or the prospects that
they do their sons, simply because they can't depend upon them in
the same way afterwards. If a girl marries,--and she ought to if she
can _right_,"--

"And what if she _has_ to, if she can, wrong?"

"Then she interferes with Providence again. She hasn't patience. She
takes what wasn't meant for her, and she misses what was; whether
it's work, or--somebody to work for her."

They were coming near Mrs. Kent's little white gate.

"I've a great mind to tell you," said Marion, "I don't have anybody
to help me judge."

Sunderline was a little disconcerted. It is a difficult position for
a young man to find himself in: that of suddenly elected confidant
and judge concerning a young woman's personal affairs; unless,
indeed, he be quite ready to seek and assume the permanent
privilege. It is a hazardous appeal for a young woman to make. It
may win or lose, strengthen or disturb, much.

"Your mother"--began Sunderline.

"O, mother doesn't see; she doesn't understand. How can she, living
as she does? I could make her advise me to suit myself. She never
goes about. The world has run ahead of her. She says I must conclude
as I think best."

Sunderline was silent.

"I've a chance," said Marion, "if I will take it. A chance to do
something that I like, something that I think I _could_ do. I can't
stand the shops; there's a plenty of girls that are crazy for the
places; let them have 'em. And I can't stay at home and iron lace
curtains for other folks, or go round to rip up and make over other
folks' old dirty carpets. I don't mean mother shall do it much
longer. This is what I can do: I can get on to the lecture list, for
reading and reciting. The Leverings,--you remember Virginia
Levering, who gave a reading here last winter; her father was with
her,--Hamilton Levering, the elocutionist? Well, I know them very
well; I've got acquainted with them since; they say they'll help me,
and put me forward. Mr. Levering will give me lessons and get me
some evenings. He thinks I would do well. And next year they mean to
go out West, and want me to go with them. Would you?"

Marion looked eagerly and anxiously in Sunderline's face as she
asked the question. He could not help seeing that she cared what he
might think. And on his part, he could not help caring a good deal
what she might do. He did not like to see this girl, whom he had
known and been friends with from childhood, spoilt. There was good,
honest stuff in her, in spite of her second-rate vanities and
half-bred ambitions. If she would only grow out of these, what a
womanly woman she might be! That fair, grand-featured face of hers,
what might it not come to hold and be beautiful with, if it could
once let go its little airs and consciousnesses that cramped it? It
had a finer look in it now than she thought of, as she waited with
real ingenuous solicitude, his answer.

He gave it gravely and conscientiously.

"I don't think I have any business to advise. But I don't exactly
believe in that sort of thing. It isn't a genuine trade."

"Why not? People like it. Virginia Levering makes fifty dollars a
night, even when they have to hire a hall."

"And how often do the nights come? And how long is it likely to
last?"

"Long enough to make money, I guess," said Marion, laughing. She was
a little reassured at Sunderline's toleration of the idea, even so
far as to make calm and definite objection. "And it's pleasant at
the time. I like going about. I like to please people. I like to be
somebody. It may be silly, but that's the truth."

"And what would you be afterward, when you had had your day? For
none of these days last long, especially with women."

"O!" exclaimed Marion, with remonstrative astonishment. "Mrs.
Kemble! Charlotte Cushman!"

"It won't do to quote them, I'm afraid. I suppose you'd hardly
expect to come up into that row?" said Sunderline, smiling.

"They began, some time," returned Marion.

"Yes; but for one thing, it wasn't a time when everybody else was
beginning. Shall I tell you plainly how it seems to me?"

"I wish you would."

They had walked slowly for the last three or four minutes, till they
had come to the beginning of the paling in which, a little further
on, was the white gate. They paused here; Frank Sunderline rested
his box of tools on the low wall that ran up and joined the fence,
and Marion turned and stood with her face toward him in the western
light, and her little pink-lined linen sunshade up between her and
the low sun,--between her and the roadway also, down which might
come any curious passers-by.

"It seems to me," said Frank Sunderline, "that women are getting on
to the platforms nowadays, not so much for any real errand they have
there, as just for the sake of saying, I'm here! I think it is very
much the 'to be seen of men' motive,--the poorest part of women's
characters,--that plays itself out in this way, as it always has
done in dancing and dressing and acting, and what not. It isn't that
a woman might not be on a platform, if she were called there, as
well as anywhere else. There never was a woman came out before the
world in any grand, true way, that she wasn't all the more honored
and attended to because she _was_ a woman. There are some things too
good to be made common; things that ought to be saved up for a
special time, so that they may _be_ special. If it falls to a woman
to be a Queen, and to open and dismiss her Parliament, nobody in all
the kingdom but thinks the words come nobler and sweeter for a
woman's saying them. But that's because she is _put_ there, not
because she climbs up some other way. If a woman honestly has
something that she must say--some great word from the Lord, or for
her country, or for suffering people,--then let her say it; and
every real woman's husband, and every real mother's son, will hear
her with his very heart. Or if even she has some sure wonderful
gift,--if she can sing, or read, or recite; if she can stir people
up to good and beautiful things as _one in a thousand_, that's her
errand; let her do it, and let the thousand come to hear. But she
ought to be certain sure, or else she's leaving her real errand
behind. Don't let everybody, just because the door is open, rush in
without any sort of a pass or countersign. That's what it's coming
to. A _sham trade_, like hundreds of other sham trades; and the
shammer and the shamefuller, because women demean themselves to it.
I can't bear to see women changing so, away from themselves. We
shan't get them back again, this generation. The _homes_ are going.
Young men of these days have got to lose their wives--that they
ought to have--and their homes that they looked forward to, such as
their mothers made. It's hard upon them; it takes away their hopes
and their motives; it's as bad for them as for the women. It's the
abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. There's no end
to the mischief; but it works first and worst with exactly girls of
your class--_our_ class, Marion. Girls that are all upset out of
their natural places, and not really fit for the new things they
undertake to do. As I said,--how long will it last? How long will
the Mr. Hamilton Leverings put you forward and find chances for you?
Just as long as you are young and pretty and new. And then, what
have you got left? What are you going to turn round to?"

Sunderline stopped. The color flushed up in his face. He had spoken
faster and freer and longer than he had thought of; the feeling that
he had in him about this thing, and the interest he had in Marion
Kent, all rushed to words together, so that he almost forgot that
Marion Kent in bodily presence stood listening before him, he was
dealing so much more with his abstract thought of her, and his
notion of real womanhood.

But Marion Kent did stand there. She flushed up too, when he said,
"We are going to lose our wives by it." What did he mean? Would he
lose anything, if she took to this that she thought of, and went
abroad into the world, and before it? Why didn't he say so, then?
Why didn't he give her the choice?

But what difference need it make, in any such way? Why shouldn't a
girl be doing her part beforehand, as a man does? He was getting
ahead in his trade, and saving money. By and by, he would think he
had got enough, and then he would ask somebody to be his wife. What
should the wife have been doing in the mean time--before she was
sure that she should ever be a wife? Why shouldn't she look out for
herself?

She said so.

"I don't see exactly, Mr. Sunderline."

She called him "Mr. Sunderline," though she remembered very well
that in the earnestness of his talk he had called her "Marion." They
had grown to that time of life when a young man and a girl who have
known each other always, are apt to drop the familiar Christian
name, and not take up anything else if they can help it. The time
when they carefully secure attention before they speak, and then use
nothing but pronouns in addressing each other. A girl, however, says
"Mr." a little more easily than a man says "Miss." The girl has
always been "Miss" to the world in general; the boy grows up to his
manly title, and it is not a special personal matter to give it to
him. There is something, even, in the use of it, which delicately
marks an attitude--not of distance, but of a certain maidenly and
bewitching consciousness--in a girl friend grown into a woman, and
recognizing the man.

"I don't see, exactly, Mr. Sunderline," said Marion. "Why shouldn't
a girl do the best she can? Will she be any the worse for it
afterwards? Why should the wives be all spoilt, any more than the
husbands?"

"Real work wouldn't spoil; only the sham and the show. Don't do it,
Marion. I wouldn't want my sister to, if I had one--there!"

He had not meant so directly to answer her question. He came to this
end involuntarily.

Marion felt herself tingle from head to foot with the suddenness of
the negative that she had asked for and brought down upon herself.
Now, if she acted, she must act in defiance of it. She felt angrily
ashamed, too, of the position in which his words put her; that of a
girl seeking notoriety, for mere show's sake; desiring to do a sham
work; to make a pretension without a claim. How did he know what her
claim might be? She had a mind to find out, and let him see. Sister!
what did he say that for? He needn't have talked about sisters, or
wives either, after that fashion. Spoilt! Well, what should she save
herself for? It was pretty clear it wouldn't be much to him.

The color died down, and she grew quiet, or thought she did. She
meant to be very quiet; very indifferent and calm. She lifted up her
eyes, and there was a sort of still flash in them. Now that her
cheek was cool, they burned,--burned their own color, blue-gray that
deepened almost into black.

"I've a good will, however," she said slowly, "to find out what I
_can_ do. Perhaps neither you nor I know that, yet. Then I can make
up my mind. I rather believe in taking what comes. A bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush. Very likely nobody will ever care
particularly whether I'm spoilt or not. And if I'm spoilt for one
thing, I may be made for another. There have got to be all sorts of
people in the world, you know."

She was very handsome, with her white chin up, haughtily; her nose
making its straight, high line, as she turned her face half away;
her eyes so dark with will, and the curve of hurt pride in her lips
that yet might turn easily to a quiver. She spoke low and smooth;
her words dropped cool and clear, without a tone of temper in them;
if there was passionate force, it was from a fire far down.

If she could do so upon a stage; if she could look like that saying
other people's words--words out of a book: if she could feel into
the passions of a world, and interpret them; then, indeed! But
Marion Kent had never entered into heights and depths of thought and
of experience; she knew only Marion Kent's little passions as they
came to her, and spoke themselves in homely, unchoice words. Mrs.
Kemble or Charlotte Cushman might have made a study from that face
that would have served for a Queen Katharine; but Queen Katharine's
grand utterances would never have thrilled Marion Kent to wear the
look as she wore it now, piqued by the plain-speaking--and the _not_
speaking--of the young village carpenter.

"I hope you don't feel hurt with me; I've only been honest, and I
meant to be kind," said Frank Sunderline.

"No, indeed; I dare say you did," returned Marion. "After all,
everybody has got to judge for themselves. I was silly to think
anybody could help me."

"Perhaps you could help yourself better," said the young man, loth
to leave her in this mood, "if you thought how you would judge for
somebody you cared for. If your own little sister"--

Now the quiver came. Now all the hurt, and pique, and shame, and
jealous disappointment rushed together to mingle and disguise
themselves with a swell and pang that always rose in her at the name
of her little dead sister,--dead six years ago, when she was nine
and Marion twelve.

The tears sprang to the darkened eyes, and quenched down their
burning; the color swept into her face, like the color after a
blow; the lips gave way; and with words that came like a cry she
exclaimed passionately,--

"Don't speak of little Sue! I can't bear it! I never could! I don't
know what I say now. Good-night, good-by."

And she left him there with his box upon the wall; turned and
hurried along the path, and in through the little white gate.




CHAPTER IV.

NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT.


Rodney Sherrett got up from the breakfast table, where he had eaten
half an hour later than the rest of the family, threw aside the
newspaper that had served to accompany his meal as it had previously
done his father's, and walked out through the conservatory upon the
slope of lawn scattered over with bright little flower-beds, among
which his sister, with a large shade hat on, and a pair of garden
scissors and a basket in her hands, was moving about, cutting
carnations and tea-roses and bouvardia and geranium leaves and bits
of vines, for her baskets and shells and vases.

"I say, Amy, why haven't you been over to the Argenters' this long
while? Why don't you get Sylvie here?"

"Why, I did go, Rod! Just when you asked me to. And she has been
here; she called three weeks ago."

"O, poh! After the spill! Of course you did. Just called; and she
called. Why need that be the end of it? Why don't you make much of
her? I can tell you she's a girl you _might_ make much of. She
behaved like a lady, that day; and a _woman_,--that's more. She was
neither scared nor mad; didn't scream, nor pout; nor even stand
round to keep up the excitement. She was just cool and quiet, and
took herself off properly. I don't know another girl that would have
done so. She saved me out of the scrape as far as she was concerned;
she might have made it ten times the muss it was. I'd rather run
down a whole flock of sheep than graze the varnish off a woman's
wheel, as a general principle. There's real backbone to Sylvie
Argenter, besides her prettiness. My father would like her, I know.
Why don't you bring her here; get intimate with her? I can't do
it,--too fierce, you know."

Amy Sherrett laughed.

"What a nice little cat's-paw a sister makes! Doesn't she, Rod?"

"I wonder if cats don't like chestnuts too, sometimes," said Rod;
and then he whistled.

"What a worry you are, Rod!" said Amy, with a little frown that some
pretty girls have a way of making; half real and half got up for the
occasion; a very becoming little pucker of a frown that seems to put
a lovely sort of perplexed trouble into the beautiful eyes, only to
show how much too sweet and tender they really are ever to be
permitted a perplexity, and what a touching and appealing thing it
would be if a trouble should get into them in any earnest. "In term
time I'm always wishing it well over, for fear of what dreadful
thing you may do next; and when it is vacation, it gets to be so
much worse, here and there and everywhere, that I'm longing for you
to be safe back in Cambridge."

"Coming home Saturday nights? Well, you do get about the best of me
so. And we fellows get just the right little sprinkle of family
influence, too. It loses its affect when you have it all the time.
That's what I tell Truesdaile, when he goes on about home, and what
a thing it is to have a sister,--he doesn't exactly say _my_ sister;
I suppose he believes in the tenth commandment. By the way, he's
knocking round at the seashore some where using up the time. I've
half a mind to hunt him up and get him back here for the last week
or so. I think he'd like it."

"Nonsense, Rod! You can't. When Aunt Euphrasia's away."

"She would come back, if you asked her; wouldn't she? I think it
would be a charity. Put it to her as an opportunity. She'd drop
anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever
goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's something like a
mowing machine: a grand good thing, but needs a scythe to follow
round and pick out the stumps and corners."

Amy shook her head.

"I don't believe I'll ask her, Rod. She's perfectly happy up there
in New Ipswich, painting wild flowers and pressing ferns, and
swinging those five children in her hammock, and carrying them all
to drive in her pony-wagon, and getting up hampers of fish and
baskets of fruit, and beef sirloins by express, and feeding them all
up, and paying poor dear cousin Nan ten dollars a week for letting
her do it. I guess it's my opportunity to get along here without
her, and let her stay."

"Incorruptible! Well--you're a good girl, Amy. I must come down to
plain soft-sawder. Put some of those things together prettily, as
you know how, and drive over and take them to Sylvie Argenter this
afternoon, will you?"

"Fish and fruit and sirloins!"

"Amy, you're an aggravator!"

"No. I'm only grammatical. I'm sure those were the antecedents."

"If you don't, I will."

"If you will, I will too, Rod! Drive me over, that's a good boy, and
I'll go."

Amy seized with delicate craft her opportunity for getting her
brother off from one of his solitary, roaming expeditions with Red
Squirrel that ended too often in not being solitary, but in bringing
him into company with people who knew about horses, or had them to
show, and were planning for races, and who were likely to lead
Rodney, in spite of his innate gentlemanhood, into more of mere
jockeyism than either she or her father liked.

"But the flowers, I fancy, Rod, would be coals to Newcastle. They
have a greenhouse."

"And have never had a decent man to manage it. It came to nothing
this year. She told me so. You see it just is a literal _new_
castle. Mr. Argenter is too busy in town to look after it; and
they've been cheated and disappointed right and left. They're not to
blame for being new," he continued, seeing the least possible little
_lifted_ look about Amy's delicate lips and eyebrows. "I hate _that_
kind of shoddiness."

"'Don't fire--I'll come down,'" said Amy, laughing. "And I don't
think I ever get _very_ far up, beyond what's safe and reasonable
for a"--

"Nice, well-bred little coon," said Rodney, patting her on the
shoulder, in an exuberance of gracious approval and beamingly serene
content. "I'll take you in my gig with Red Squirrel," he added, by
way of reward of merit.

Now Amy in her secret heart was mortally afraid of Red Squirrel, but
she would have been upset ten times over--by Rodney--sooner than say
so.

When Sylvie Argenter, that afternoon, from her window with its cool,
deep awning, saw Rodney Sherrett and his sister coming up the drive,
there flashed across her, by a curious association, the thought of
the young carpenter who had gone up the village street and bowed to
Ray Ingraham, the baker's daughter.

After all, the gentleman's "place," apart and retired, and the long
"approach," were not so very much worse, when the "people in the
carriages,"--the right people,--really came: and "on purpose" was
not such a bad qualification of the coming, either.

And when Mrs. Argenter, hearing the bell, and the movement of an
arrival, and not being herself summoned in consequence, rung
in her own room for the maid, and received for answer to her
inquiry,--"Miss Sherrett and young Mr. Sherrett, ma'am, to see Miss
Sylvie,"--she turned back to her volume of "London Society," much
and mixedly reconciled in her thoughts to two things that occurred
to her at once,--one of them adding itself to the other as
manifestly in the same remarkable order of providence; "that
tip-out" from the basket-phæton, and the new white frill-trimmed
polonaise that Miss Sylvie would put on, so needlessly, this
afternoon, in spite of her remonstrance that the laundress had just
left without warning, and there was no knowing when they should ever
find another.

"There is certainly a fate in these matters," she said to herself,
complacently. "_One_ thing always follows another."

Mrs. Argenter was apt to make to herself a "House that Jack built"
out of her providences. She had always a little string of them to
rehearse in every history; from the malt that lay in the house, and
the rat that ate the malt, up to the priest all shaven and shorn,
that married the man that kissed the maid--and so on, all the way
back again. She counted them up as they went along. "There was the
overturn," she would say, by and by "and there was Rodney
Sherrett's call because of that, and then his sister's because no
doubt he asked her, and then their both coming together; and there
was your pretty white polonaise, you know, the day they did come;
and there was"--Mrs. Argenter has not counted up to that yet.
Perhaps it may be a long while before she will so readily count it
in.

It had turned out a hot day; one of those days in the nineties, when
if you once hear from the thermometer, or in any way have the fact
forcibly brought home to you, you relinquish all idea of exertion
yourself, and look upon the world outside as one great pause, out of
which no movement can possibly come, unless there first come the
beneficence of an east wind, which the dwellers on Massachusetts Bay
have always for a reserve of hope. Yet it may quite well occur to
here and there an individual with a resolute purpose in the day, to
actually live through it and pursue the intended plan, without
realizing the extra degrees of Fahrenheit at all, and to learn with
surprise at set of sun when the deeds are done, of the excelsior
performances of the mercury. With what secret amazement and dismay
is one's valor recognized, however, when it has led one to render
one's self at four in the afternoon on such a day, near one's friend
who _has_ been vividly conscious of the torrid atmosphere! Did you
ever make or receive such an afternoon call?

Mrs. Argenter, comfortable in her thin wrapper, reading her thin
romance, did not trouble herself to be astonished. "They were young
people; young people could do anything," she dimly thought; and
putting the white polonaise into the structure of the House that
Jack built, she interrupted herself no farther than presently to
ring her bell again, and tell the maid on no account to admit any
one to see herself, and to be sure that there were plenty of
raspberries brought in for tea.

Meanwhile, away in the cities, the thermometer had climbed and
climbed. Pavements were blistering hot; watering carts went
lumbering round only to send up a reek of noisome mist and to leave
the streets whitening again a few yards behind them. Blinds were
closed up and down the avenues, where people had either long left
their houses vacant or were sheltering themselves in depths of gloom
in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels
and hammers had a sound that made you think of sparks struck out, as
if the world were a great forge and all its matter at a white heat.
Down in the poor, crowded places, where the gutters fumed with
filth, and doors stood open upon horrible passages and staircases,
little children, barefooted, with one miserable garment on, sat on
grimy stone steps, or played wretchedly about the sidewalks,
impeding the passers of a better class who hastened with bated
breath, amidst the fever-breeding nuisances, along to railway
stations whence they would escape to country and sea-side homes.

On the wharves was the smell of tarred seams and
cordage,--sweltering in the sun; in the counting-rooms the clerks
could barely keep the drops of moisture from their faces from
falling down to blot their toilsome lines of figures on the
faultless pages of the ledgers; on the Common, common men
surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass,
regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered
off; little babies in second-rate boarding-houses, where their
fathers and mothers had to stay for cheapness the summer through
wailed the helpless, pitiful cry of a slowly murdered infancy; and
out on the blazing thoroughfares where business had to be busy,
strong men were dropping down, and reporters were hovering about
upon the skirts of little crowds, gathering their items; making
_their_ hay while this terrible sun was shining.

What did Mrs. Argenter care?

The sun would be going down now, in a little while; then the cool
piazzas, and the raspberries and cream, and the iced milk,--yellow
Alderney milk,--would be delightful. Once or twice she did think of
"Argie" in New York,--gone thither on some perplexing, hurried
errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of
which she had only half heard,--and remembered that the heat must be
"awful" there. But to-night he would be on board the splendid Sound
steamer, coming home; and to-morrow, if this lasted, she would
surely speak to him about getting off for a while to Rye, or Mount
Desert.

She came by and by to the end of her volume, and found that the
serial she was following ran on into the next.

"Provoking," she said, tossing it down to the end of the sofa, "and
neither Sylvie nor I can get into town in this heat, and Argie
thinks it such a bother to be asked to go to Loring's."

Just then Sylvie's step came lightly up the stairs. She looked into
the large cool dressing-room where her mother lay.

"I'm only up for my 'Confession Album'," she said. "But O Mater
Amata! if you'd just come down and help me through! I know they'd
stay to tea and go home in the cool, if I only knew how to ask them;
but if I said a word I should be sure to drive them away. _You_ can
do it; and they would if you came. Please do!"

"You silly child! Won't you ever be able to do anything yourself?
When you were a little girl, you wouldn't carry a message, because
you could get into a house, but didn't know how to get out! And now
you are grown up, you can get people into the house to see you, but
you don't know how to ask them to stay to tea! What _shall_ I ever
do with you?"

"I don't know. I'm awfully afraid of--_nice_ girls!"

"Sylvie, I'm ashamed of you! As if you had any other kind of
acquaintance, or weren't as nice as any of them! I wouldn't suggest
it, even to myself, if I were you."

"And I don't," said Sylvie boldly--"when I'm _by_ myself. But
there's a kind of a little misgiving somehow, when they come, or
when I go, as if--well, as if there _might_ be something to it that
I didn't know of, or behind it that I hadn't got; or else, that
there were things that they had nothing to do with that I know too
much of. A kind of a--Poggowantimoc feeling, mother! Amy Sherrett is
so _fearfully_ refined,--all the way through! It doesn't seem as if
she ever had any common things to say or do. Don't you think it
_takes_ common things to get people really near to each other? It
doesn't seem to me I could ever be intimate--or very easy--with Amy
Sherrett."

"You seemed to get on well enough with her brother, the other day."

"Boys aren't half so bad. There isn't any such wax-work about boys.
Besides,"--and Sylvie laughed a low, gay little laugh,--we got spilt
out together, you know."

"Well, don't stand talking. You mustn't keep them waiting. It isn't
time to speak about tea, yet. Look over the album, and get at some
music. _Keep_ them without saying anything about it. When people
think every minute they are just going, is just when they are having
the very pleasantest time."

"I know it. But you'll come, won't you, and make it all right? Put
on something loose and cool; that lovely black lace jacket with the
violet lining, and your gray silk skirt. It won't take you a minute.
Your hair's perfectly sweet now." And Sylvie hurried away.

Mrs. Argenter came down, twenty minutes afterwards, into the great
summer drawing-room, where the finest Indian matting, and dark, rich
Persian rugs, and inner window blinds folded behind lace curtains
that fell like the foam of waterfalls from ceiling to floor, made a
pleasantness out of the very heat against which such furnishings
might be provided.

In her silken skirt of silver gray, and the llama sack, violet
lined, to need no tight corsage beneath, her fair wrists and arms
showing white and cool in the wide drapery sleeves, she looked a
very lovely lady. Sylvie was proud of her handsome, elegant mother.
She grew a great deal braver always when Mrs. Argenter came in. She
borrowed a second consciousness from her in which she took courage,
assured that all was right. Chairs and rugs gave her no such
confidence, though she knew that the Sherretts themselves had no
more faultless surroundings. Anybody could have rugs and chairs. It
was the presence among them that was wanted; and poor Sylvie seemed
to herself to melt quite away, as it were, before such a girl as Amy
Sherrett, and not to be able to be a presence at all.

It was all right now, as Sylvie had said. They could not leave
immediately upon Mrs. Argenter joining them and her joining them was
of itself a welcome and an invitation. So Sylvie called upon her
mother to admire the lovely basket, wherein on damp, tender, bright
green moss, clustered the most exquisite blossoms, and the most
delicate trails of stem and leafage wandered and started up lightly,
and at last fell like a veil over rim and handle, and dropped below
the edge of the tiny round table with Siena marble top, on which
Sylvie had placed it between the curtains of the recess that led
through to their conservatory, which had been "a failure this year."

"I would not tell you of it, Amata. I wanted you just to see it,"
she said. And Mrs. Argenter admired and thanked, and then lamented
their own ill-success in greenhouse and garden culture.

"I am not strong enough to look after it much myself, and Mr.
Argenter never has time," she said; "and our first man was a
tipsifier, and the last was a rogue. He sold off quantities of the
best young plants, we found, just before they came to show for
anything."

"Our man has been with us for eight years," said Rodney Sherrett. "I
dare say he could recommend some one to you, if you liked; and he
wouldn't send anybody that wasn't right. Shall I ask him?"

Mrs. Argenter would be delighted if he would; and then Mr. Sherrett
must come into the conservatory, where a few ragged palm ferns,
their great leaves browning and crumbling at the edges,--some
daphnes struggling into green tips, having lost their last growth of
leaf and dropped all their flower buds, and several calmly enduring
orange and lemon trees, gave all the suggestion of foliage that the
place afforded, and served, much like the painter's inscription at
the bottom of his canvas merely to signify by the scant glimpse
through the drawing-room draperies,--"This is a conservatory."

Mrs. Argenter asked Rodney something about the best arrangement for
the open beds, and wanted to know what would be surest to do well
for the rockery, and whether it was in a good part of the
house,--sufficiently shaded? Meanwhile, Amy and Sylvie were turning
over music, and when they all gathered together again the call had
extended to a two hours' visit.

"It is really unpardonable," Amy Sherrett was saying, and picking up
the pretty little hat which she had thrown down upon a chair,--"it
had been so warm to wear anything a minute that one need not." And
then Mrs. Argenter said so easily and of course, that they
"certainly would not think of going now, when it would soon be
really pleasant for a twilight drive; tea would be ready early, for
she and Sylvie were alone, and all they had cared for to-day had
been a cold lunch at one. They would have it on the north veranda;"
and she touched a bell to give the order.

Perhaps Amy Sherrett would hardly have consented, but that Rodney
gave her a look, comical in its appeal, over Sylvie's shoulder, as
she stood showing him a great scarlet Euphorbia in a portfolio of
water-colors, and said with a beseeching significance,--

"Consider Red Squirrel, Amy. He really did have a pretty hard pull;
and what with the heat and the flies, I dare say he would take it
with more equanimity after sundown,--since Mrs. Argenter is so very
kind."

And so they stayed; and Mrs. Argenter laid another little brick in
her "House that Jack built."

       *       *       *       *       *

At this same time,--how should she know it?--something very
different was going on in one of the rooms of a great hotel in New
York. Somebody else who had meant before now to have left for home,
had been delayed till after sundown. Somebody else would go over the
road by dark instead of by daylight. By dark,--though there should
be broad, beating sunshine over the world again when the journey
should be made.

While Mrs. Argenter's maid was bringing out the tray with delicate
black-etched china cups, and costly fruit plates illuminated
with color, and dainty biscuits, and large, rare, red berries,
and cream that would hardly pour for richness in a gleaming
crystal flagon,--and ranging them all on the rustic veranda
table,--something very different,--very grim,--at which the
occupants of rooms near by shuddered as it passed their open
doors,--was borne down the long, wide corridor to Number Five, in
the Metropolitan; and at the same moment, again, a gentleman, very
grave, was standing at the counter of the Merchants' Union Telegraph
Company's Office, writing with rapid hand, a brief dispatch,
addressed to "Mrs. I.M. Argenter, Dorbury, Mass.," and signed
"Philip Burkmayer, M.D."

Nobody knew of any one else to send to; at that hour, especially,
when the office in State Street would be closed. Closed, with that
name outside the door that stood for nobody now.

The news must go bare and unbroken to her.

Something occurred to Doctor Burkmayer, however, as he was just
handing the slip to the attendant.

"Stop; give me that again, a minute," he said; and tearing it in
two, he wrote another, and then another.

"Send this on at once, and the second in an hour," he said; as if
they might have been prescriptions to be administered. "They may
both be delivered together after all," he continued to himself, as
he turned away. "But it is all I can do. When a weight is let drop,
it has got to fall. You can't ease it up much with a string measured
out for all the way down!"

The young woman operator at the little telegraph station at Dorbury
Upper Village heard the call-click as she unlocked the room and came
in after her half-hour supper time. She set the wires and responded,
and laid the paper slip under the wonderful pins.

"Tick-tick-tick; tick-tick; tick-tick-tick-tick," and so on. The
girl's face looked startled, as she spelled the signs along. She
answered back when it was ended; then wrote out the message rapidly
upon a blank, folded, directed it, and went to the open street door.

"Sim! Here--quick!" she called to a youth opposite, in a
stable-yard.

"This has got to go down to the Argenter Place. And mind how you
give it. It's bad news."

"How can _I_ mind?" said Sim, gruffly. "I spose I must give it to
who comes."

"You might see somebody on the way, and speak a word; a neighbor, or
the minister, or somebody. 'Tain't fit for it to go right to her,
_I_ know. Telegraphs might as well be something else when they can,
besides lightning!"

"Donno's I can go travellin' round after 'em, if that's what you
mean," said Sim, putting the envelope in his rough breast pocket,
and turning off.

Sylvie was standing on the stone steps, bidding the Sherretts
good-by; Amy was just seated in the gig, and Rodney about to spring
in beside her, when Sim Atwill drove up the avenue in the rusty
covered wagon that did telegraph errands. Red Squirrel did not quite
like the sudden coming face to face, as Sim reined up in a hurry
just below the door, and Rodney had to pause and hold him in.

"A tellagrim for Mrs. Argenter," said Sim, seizing his opportunity,
and speaking to whom it might concern. "Eighty cents to pay, and I
'blieve it's bad news."

"O, Mr. Sherrett, stop, please!" cried Sylvie, turning white in the
dim light. "What shall I do? Won't you wait a minute, Miss Sherrett,
until I see? Won't you come in again? Mother will be frightened to
death, and I'm all alone."

"Jump out, Amy; I'll take Squirrel round," was Rodney's answer. "Go
right up; I'll come."

And as Sylvie took the thin envelope that held so much, and the two
girls silently passed up into the piazza again, he paid Sim the
eighty cents which nobody thought of at that moment or ever again,
and sent him off.

Sylvie and Amy stopped under the softly bright hall lantern. Mrs.
Argenter was up-stairs in her dressing room, quite at the end of the
long upper hall, changing her lace sack for a cashmere, before
coming out into the evening air again.

"I think I shall open it myself," whispered Sylvie, tremulously; "it
would seem worse to mother, whatever it is, coming this way. She has
such a horror of a telegram." She looked at it on both sides, drew a
little shivering breath, and paused again.

"Is it wicked, do you think, to wish it may be--only grandma,
perhaps? Do you suppose it could _possibly_ be--my _father_?"

And by this time there was a hysterical sound in poor little
Sylvie's voice.

"Wait a minute," said Amy, kindly. "Here's Rod."

                    "OFFICE OF WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH CO.,
                         NEW YORK, _July_ 24_th_, 187-.

      "To MRS. I. M. ARGENTER, Dorbury, Mass.

      "Mr. Argenter has had a sunstroke. Insensible. Very serious.
      Will telegraph again.

                             "PHILIP BURKMAYER, M.D."

Sylvie's eyes, so roundly innocent, so star-like in their usual
bright uplifting, were raised now with a wide terror in them, first
to Rodney, then to Amy; and "O--O!" broke in short, subdued gasps
from her lips.

Then they heard Mrs. Argenter's step up-stairs.

"What is the matter, Sylvie? What are you doing? Who is with you
down there?" she said, over the baluster, from the hall above.

"O, mother!" cried Sylvie, "they aren't gone! Something has _come_!
Go up and tell her, Amy, please!" And forgetting all about Amy as
"Miss Sherrett," and all her fear of "nice girls," she dropped down
on the lower step of the staircase after Amy had passed her upon her
errand, put her face between her hands and caught her breath with
frightened sobs.

Rodney, leaning against the newel post, looked down at her, and
said, after the manner of men,--"Don't cry. It mayn't be very bad,
after all. You'll hear again in an hour or two. Can't I do
something? I'll go to the telegraph office. I'll get somebody for
your mother. Whom shall I go for?"

"O, you are very kind. I don't know. Wait a minute. They didn't say
any place! We ought to go right to New York, and we don't know
where! O, dear!" She had lifted her head a little, just to say these
broken sentences, and then it went down again.

Rodney did not answer instantly. It occurred to him all at once
what this "not saying any place" might mean.

Just as he began,--"You couldn't go until to-morrow,"--came Mrs.
Argenter's sharp cry from her room above. Amy had walked right on
into the open, lighted apartment, Mrs. Argenter following, not
daring to ask what she came and did this strange thing for, till Amy
made her sit down in her own easy chair, and taking her hands, said
gently,--

"It is a telegram from New York. Mr. Argenter--is very ill." Then
Mrs. Argenter cried out, "That's not all! I know how people bring
news! Tell me the whole." And Sylvie sprang to her feet, hearing the
quick, excited words, and leaving Rodney Sherrett standing there,
rushed up into the dressing-room.

This was the way the same sort of news came to Sylvie Argenter as
had come to the baker's daughter. Did it really make any
difference--the different surrounding of the two? The great
house--the lights--the servants--the friends; and the open bake-shop
door, the village street, the blunt, common-spoken neighbor-woman,
and the boy with the brick loaf?

These two were to be fatherless: their mothers were both to be
widows: that was all.

Did it happen strangely with the two--in this same story? Who know,
always, when they are in the same story? These things are happening
every day, and one great story holds us all. If one could see wide
enough, one could tell the whole.

These things happen: and then the question comes,--alike in high and
low places,--alike with money and without it,--what the women and
the girls are to do?

Rodney Sherrett took his sister home; drove three miles round and
brought Mrs. Argenter's sister to her from River Point, and then
turned toward Dorbury Upper Village and the telegraph office. But he
met Sim Atwill on the way, received the telegram from him, and
hurried back.

It was the dispatch of the hour later, and this was it:--

      "Mr. Argenter died at five o'clock. His remains will be sent
      home to-morrow, carefully attended.

                                "PHILIP BURKMAYER."




CHAPTER V.

SPILLED OUT AGAIN.


There were paragraphs in the papers; there were resolutions at
meetings of the Board of Trade, and of the Directors of the
Trimountain Bank; there was a funeral from the "late residence,"
largely attended; there were letters and calls of condolence; there
was making of crape and bombazine and silk into "mourning;" there
were friends and neighbors asking each other, after mention of the
sad suddenness, "how it would be;" "how much he had left;" "was
there a will?"

And there was a will; made three years before. One hundred thousand
dollars, outright, to Increase M. Argenter's beloved wife; also the
use of the homestead; fifty thousand dollars to his daughter Sylvia
on her reaching the age of twenty-five, or on her marriage; all else
to be Mrs. Argenter's for her life-time, reverting afterward to
Sylvia or her heirs.

There was just time for this to be ascertained and told of; just
time for Sylvie to be named as an heiress, and then all at once
something else came to light and was told of.

There was a mining speculation out in Colorado; there was Mr.
Argenter's signature for heavy security; there were memoranda of
good safe stocks that had stood in his name a little while ago, and
no certificates; there had been sales and sacrifices; going in
deeper and to more certain loss, because of risk and danger already
run.

Mr. Sherrett, senior, came home to dinner one day with news from
the street.

"I've been very sorry to hear this morning that Argenter left things
in a bad way, after all. There won't be much of anything
forthcoming. All swallowed up in mines and lands that have gone
under. That explains the sunstroke. Half the cases are mere worry
and drive. In the old, calm times it was scarcely heard of. Now, of
a hot summer's day in New York, a hundred or two men drop down. And
then they talk of unprecedented heat. It is the heat and the ferment
that have got into life."

"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," said the quiet
voice of Aunt Euphrasia. "How strange it is that men have never
interpreted yet!"

"Ah, well! I'm not sure about sins and judgments. I don't undertake
to blame," said Mr. Sherrett. "People are born into a whirl,
nowadays,--the mass of them. How can they help it?"

"I don't know. But we begin to see how true the words were, and in
what pity they must have been spoken," said Aunt Euphrasia.
"Tremendous physical forces have been grasped and set to work for
mere material ends. Spiritual uses and living haven't kept pace. And
so there is a terrible unbalance, and the tower falls upon men's
heads."

"Well, poor Argenter wasn't a sinner above all that dwelt in
Jerusalem. And now, there are his wife and daughter. I'm sorry for
them. They'll find it a hard time."

"I'm sorry, too," said Aunt Euphrasia, with heart-gentleness. She
could not help seeing the eternal laws; she read the world and the
Word with the inner illumining; but she was tender over all the poor
souls who were not to blame for the whirl of fever and falseness
they were born into; who could not or dared not fling themselves out
of it upon the simple, steadfast, everlasting verities, and--be
broken; upon whom, therefore, these must fall, and grind them to
powder.

"How will it be with them?" she asked.

"Do you mean there isn't anything left, sir? Nothing to carry out
the will?"

Rodney had dropped his spoon and left his soup untasted, since his
father first spoke: he had lifted up his eyes quickly, and listened
with his whole face, but he had kept silence until now.

Amy had looked up also; startled by the news, and waiting to hear
more. The young people were both too really interested, from their
intimate knowledge of the first misfortune, to reply with any common
"Is it possible?" to this.

"The will, I am afraid, is only a magnificent 'might have been,'"
said Mr. Sherrett. "There may be something secured; there ought to
be. Mrs. Argenter had a small property, I believe. Otherwise, as
such things turn out, I should suppose there would be less than
nothing."

"What will they do?" The question came from Aunt Euphrasia, again.
"Can't somebody help them? There is so much money in the world."

"Yes, Effie. And there is gold in the mines. And there are plenty of
kind affections in the world, too; but there's loneliness and broken
heartedness, for all that. The difficulty always is to bring things
together."

"I suppose that is just what _people_ were made for."

"It will be one more family of precisely that sort whom nobody can
help, directly, and who scarcely know how to help themselves. The
hardest kind of cases."

"It's an awful spill-out, this time," Rodney said to Amy, as she
followed him, after her usual fashion, to the piazza, when dinner
was over. "And no mistake!"

Rodney had brought a cigar with him, but he had forgotten his match,
and he stood crumbling the end of it, frowning his brows together in
a way they were not often used to.

"Will they have to go away?" asked Amy.

"Out of that house? Of course. They'll be just tipped out of
everything."

"How dreadful it will be for Sylvie!"

"She won't stand round lamenting. I've seen her tipped out before.
Amy, I'll tell you what; you ought to stick by. Maybe she won't
want you, at first; but you ought to do it. Father,"--as Mr.
Sherrett came out with his evening paper to his cane reclining
chair,--"you'll go and see Mrs. Argenter, shall you not?"

"Why, yes, if I could be of any service. But one wouldn't like to
intrude. There are executors to the will. I don't know that it is
quite my place."

"I don't believe there will be much intruding--of _your_ sort. And
the executors have got nothing to do now. Who are they?"

"Jobling and Cardwell, I believe. Men down town. Perhaps she might
like to see a neighbor. Yes, I think I will go. You can drive me
round, Rodney, some evening soon. Whom has she, of her own people, I
wonder?"

"Only her sister, Mrs. Lowndes, you know. The brother-in-law isn't
much, I imagine."

"Stephen A. Lowndes? No. Broken-down and out of the world. He
couldn't advise to any purpose. I fancy Argenter has been holding
_him_ up."

"I think they'll be very glad to see you, sir."

Rodney drove his father over the next night. Mr. Sherrett went in
alone. Rodney sat in the chaise outside.

Mr. Sherrett waited some minutes after he had sent up his card, and
then Sylvie came down to him, looking pale in her black dress, and
with the trouble really in her young eyes, over which the brows bent
with a strange heaviness.

"I could not persuade mother to come down," she said. "She does not
feel able to see anybody. But I wanted to thank you for coming, Mr.
Sherrett."

"I thought an old neighbor might venture to ask if he could be of
use. A lady needs some one to talk things over with. I know your
mother must have much to think of, and she cannot have been used to
business. I should not come for a mere call at such a time. I should
be glad to be of some service."

"Would you be kind enough to sit down a few minutes and talk with
me, Mr. Sherrett?"

There was a difference already between the Sylvie of to-day and the
Sylvie of a few weeks ago. It was no longer a question of little
nothings,--of how she should get people in and how she could get
them out,--of what she should do and say to seem "nice all through,"
like Amy Sherrett. Mr. Sherrett had not come for a "mere call," as
he said; and there was no mere "receiving." The llama lace and the
gray silk and the small _savoir faire_ could not help her now. Mrs.
Argenter was up-stairs in a black tamise wrapper with a large plain
black shawl folded about her, as she lay in the chill of a suddenly
cool August evening, on the sofa in her dressing-room, which for the
last week or two she had rarely left. All at once, Sylvie found that
she must think and speak both for her mother and herself.

Mrs. Argenter could run smoothly in one polished groove; she was
thrown out now, and to her the whole world was off its axis. Her
House that Jack built had tumbled down; she thought so, not
accepting this strange block that had come to be wrought in. She had
been counting little brick after little brick that she had watched
idly in the piling; now there was this great weight that she could
not deal with, laid upon her hands for bearing and for using; she
let it crush her down, not knowing that, fitting it bravely into her
life that was building, it might stand there the very threshold over
which she should pass into perfect shelter of content.

"Mother has been entirely bewildered by all this trouble," said
Sylvie, quietly, to Mr. Sherrett. "I don't think she really
understands. She has lived so long with things as they are, that she
cannot imagine them different. I think it is easier with me,
because, you know, I haven't been used to _anything_ such a _very_
long while."

Sylvie even smiled a tremulous little smile as she said this; and
Mr. Sherrett looked at her with one upon his own face that had as
much pitiful tenderness in it as could have shown through tears.

"You see we shall have to do something right off,--go somewhere; and
mother can't change the least thing. She can't spare Sabina, who has
heard of a good place, and must go soon at any rate, because nobody
else would know where things belonged or are put away, or fetch her
anything she wanted. And the very things, I suppose, don't belong to
us. How shall we break through and begin again?" Sylvie looked up
earnestly at Mr. Sherrett, asking this question. This was what she
really wanted to know.

"You will remove, I suppose?" said Mr. Sherrett "If you could hear
of a house,--if you could propose something definite,--if you and
Sabina could begin to pack up,--how would that be?"

He met her inquiry with primary, practical suggestions, just what
she needed, wasting no words. He saw it was the best service he
could do this little girl who had suddenly become the real head of
the household.

"I have thought, and thought," said Sylvie; "and after all, mother
must decide. Perhaps she wouldn't want to keep house. I don't know
whether we could. She spoke once about boarding. But boarding costs
a great deal, doesn't it?"

"To live as you would need to,--yes."

"I should hate to have to manage small, and change round, in
boarding. I know some people who live so. It would give me a very
mean feeling. It would be like trying to get a bite of everybody's
bread and butter. I'd rather have my own little loaf."

"You are a brave, true little woman," said Mr. Sherrett, warmly.
"All you want is to be set in the right direction, and see your way.
You'll be sure to go on."

"I _think_ I should. If mother can only be contented. I think I
should rather like it. I could _understand_ living better. There
would only be a little at a time. A great deal, and a great many
things, make it a puzzle."

"Have you any knowledge about the property?"

"Mr. Cardwell has been here two or three times. He says there are
twelve thousand dollars secured to mother by a note and mortgage on
this place. It was money of hers that was put into it. We shall have
the income of that; and there might be things, perhaps, that we
should have the right to sell, or keep to furnish with. Seven and a
half per cent, on twelve thousand dollars would be nine hundred
dollars a year. If we had to pay sixteen dollars a week to board, it
would take eight hundred and thirty-two; almost the whole of it. But
perhaps we could find a place for less; and our clothes would last a
good while, I suppose."

Sylvie went through her little calculation, just as she had made it
over and over before, all by herself; she did not stop to think that
she was doing the small sum now for the enlightenment of the great
Mr. Sherrett, who calculated in millions for himself and others,
every day.

"You would hardly be comfortable in a house which you could rent for
less than--say, four hundred dollars, and that would leave very
little for your living. Perhaps I should advise you to board."

"But we could _do_ things, maybe, if we lived by ourselves, amongst
other people in small houses. We can't be _two_ things, Mr.
Sherrett, rich and poor; and it seems to me that is what we should
be trying for, if we got into a boarding-house. We should have to be
idle and ashamed. I want to take right hold. I'd like to earn
something and make it do."

Sylvie's eyes really shone. The spirit that had worked in her as a
little child, to make her think it would be nice to be a "kitchen
girl, and have a few things in boxes, and Sundays out," threw a
charm of independence and enterprise and cosy thrift over her
changed position, and the chance it gave her. Mr. Sherrett wondered
at the child, and admired her very much.

"Could you teach something? Could you keep a little school?"

"I've thought about it. But a person must know ever to much,
nowadays, to keep even the least little school. They want
Kindergartens, and all the new plans, that I haven't learnt. And
it's just so about music. You must be scientific; and all I really
know is a few little songs. But I can _dance_ well, Mr. Sherrett. I
could teach that."

There was something pathetically amusing in this bringing to market
of her one exquisite accomplishment, learned for pleasure, and the
suggestion of it at this moment, as she sat in her strange black
dress, with the pale, worn look on her face, in the home so shadowed
by heavy trouble, and about to pass away from their possession.

"You will be sure to do something, I see," said Mr. Sherrett. "Yes,
I think you had better have a quiet little home. It will be a centre
to work from, and something to work for. You can easily furnish it
from this house. Whatever has to be done, you could certainly be
allowed such things as you might make a schedule of. Would you like
me to talk for you with Mr. Cardwell, and have something arranged?"

"O, if you would! Mother dreads the very sound of Mr. Cardwell's
name, and the thought of business. She cannot bear it now. But your
advice would be so different!"

Sylvie knew that it would go far with Mrs. Argenter that Mr. Howland
Sherrett, in the relation of neighbor and friend, should plan and
suggest for them, rather than Mr. Richard Cardwell, a stranger and
mere man of business, should come and tell them things that must be.

"I'm afraid you'll think I don't realize things, I've planned and
imagined so much," Sylvie began again, "but I couldn't help
thinking. It is all I have had to do. There's a little house in
Upper Dorbury that always seemed to me so pretty and pleasant; and
nobody lives there now. At least, it was all shut up the last time
I drove by. The house with the corner piazza and the green side
yard, and the dark red roof sloping down, just off the road in the
shady turn beside the bank that only leads to two other little
houses beyond. Do you know?"

Mr. Sherrett did know. They were three houses built by members of
the same family, some years ago, upon an old village homestead
property. Two of them had passed into other hands; one--this
one--remained in its original ownership, but had been rented of
late; since the war, in which the proprietor had made money, and
with it had bought a city residence in Chester Park.

"You see we must go where things will be convenient. We can't ride
round after them any more. And we could get a girl up there, as
other people do, for general housework. I'm afraid mother wouldn't
quite like being in the village, but of course there can't be
anything that she _would quite_ like, now. And we aren't really
separate people any longer; at least, we don't belong to the
separate kind of people, and I couldn't bear to be _lonesomely_
separate. It's good to belong to _some_ kind of people; isn't it?"

"I think it is very good to belong to _your_ kind, where-ever they
are, Miss Sylvie. Tell your mother I say she may be glad of her
daughter. I'll find out about the house for you, at any rate. And
I'll see Mr. Cardwell; and I'll call again. Good-night, my dear. God
bless you!"

And the grand Mr. Howland Sherrett pressed Sylvie Argenter's hand in
both of his, as a father might have pressed it, and went out with
the feeling of a warm rush from his heart toward his eyes.

"That's a girl like a--whatever there is that means the noblest
sort of woman, and I'm not sure it _is_ a queen!" he said to Rodney,
as he seated himself in the chaise, and took the reins from his
son's hands.

Mr. Sherrett was apt to say to Rodney, "You may drive me to this or
that place," but he was very apt, also, to do the driving himself,
after all; especially if he was somewhat preoccupied, and forgot, as
he did now.

The way Mr. Howland Sherrett inquired about the red-roofed house,
was this:

He went down to Mr. John Horner's store, in Opal Street, and asked
him what was the rent of it.

"Six hundred and fifty dollars."

"Rather high, isn't it, for the situation?"

"Not for the situation of the _land_, I guess," said Mr. Horner. "I'm
paying annexation taxes."

"What will you sell the property for as it stands?"

"Eighty-five hundred dollars."

"I'll give you eight thousand, Mr. Horner, in cash, upon condition
that you will not mention its having changed hands. I have some
friends whom I wish should live there," he added, lest some deep
speculating move should be surmised.

Mr. Horner thought for the space of thirty seconds, after the rapid,
Opal Street fashion, and said,--

"You may have it. When will you take the deed?"

"To-morrow morning, at eleven o'clock. Will that be convenient?"

"All right. Yes, sir."

And the next morning at eleven o'clock, the two gentlemen exchanged
papers; Mr. Horner received a check on the First National Bank for
eight thousand dollars, and Mr. Sherrett the title-deed to house and
land on North Centre Street, Dorbury, known as part of the John
Horner estate, and bordering so and so, and so on.

The same afternoon, Mr. Sherrett called at Mrs. Argenter's, and
told her of the quiet, pleasant, retired, yet central house and
garden in Upper Dorbury, which he found she could have on a lease of
two or three years, for a rent of three hundred and fifty dollars.
It was in the hands of a lawyer in the village, who would make out
the lease and receive the payments. He had inquired it out, and
would conclude the arrangements for her, if she desired.

"I don't know that I desire anything, Mr. Sherrett. I suppose I must
do what I can, since it seems I am not to be left in my own home
which I put my own money into. If it appears suitable to you, I have
no doubt it is right. I am very much obliged to you, I am sure.
Sylvie knows the house, and has an idea she likes it. She is
childish, and likes changing. She will have enough of it, I am
afraid."

She did not even care to go over and inspect the house. Sylvie was
glad of that, for she knew it could be made to seem more homelike,
if she and Sabina could get the parlor and her mother's rooms ready
before Mrs. Argenter saw it. During the removal, it was settled that
they should go and stay with Mrs. Lowndes, at River Point. This
practically resulted in Mrs. Argenter's remaining with her sister,
while Sylvie and Sabina spent their time, night as well as day,
often, between Argenter Place and the new house.

Rodney Sherrett rode through the village one day, when they were
busy there with their arrangements.

Sylvie stood on a high flight of steps in the bay-window, putting up
some white muslin curtains, with little frills on the edges. They
had been in a sleeping-room at Argenter Place. All the furniture of
the house had been appraised, and an allowance made of two thousand
dollars, to which amount Mrs. Argenter might reserve such articles
as she wished, at the valuation. So much, and two thousand dollars
in cash, were given her in exchange for her homestead and her right
of dower in the unincumbered portion of the estate, upon which was
one other smaller mortgage. No other real property appeared in the
list of assets. Mr. Argenter had, unfortunately, invested almost
wholly in bonds, stocks, and those last ruinous mining ventures. The
land out in Colorado was useless, and besides, being wild land, did
not come under the law of dower.

Mrs. Argenter thought it was all very strange, especially that a sum
of money,--eighteen hundred dollars, which was in her husband's
desk, the proceeds of some little mortgage that he had just
sold,--was not hers to keep. She came very near stealing it from the
estate, quietly appropriating it, without meaning to be dishonest;
regarding it as simply money in the house, which her husband "would
have given her, if she had wanted it, the very day before he died."

Possibly he might; but the day after he died, it was no longer his
nor hers.

To go back to Sylvie in the bay-window. Rodney rode by, then wheeled
about and came back as far as the stone sidewalk before the Bank
entrance. He jumped off, hitched Red Squirrel to one of the posts
that sentineled the curbstone, and passed quietly round into the
"shady turn."

The front door was open, and boxes stood in the passage; he walked
in as far as the parlor door; then he tapped with his riding-whip
against the frame of it. Sylvie started on her perch, and began to
come down.

"Don't stop. I couldn't help coming in, seeing you as I went by,"
said Rodney.

Sylvie sat down on one of the middle steps. She would rather keep
still than exhibit herself in any further movement. Rodney ought to
have known better than go in then; if indeed he did _not_ know
better than Sylvie herself did, how very pretty and graceful she
looked, all out of regular and ordinary gear.

She had taken off her hoops, for her climbing; her soft, long black
dress fell droopingly about her figure and rested in folds around
and below her feet as she sat upon the step-ladder; one thick braid
of her sunshiny hair had dropped from the fastening which had looped
it up to her head, and hung, raveling into threads of light, down
over her shoulder and into her lap; her cheeks were bright with
exercise; her eyes, that trouble and thought had sobered lately to
dove-gray, were deep, brilliant blue again. She was excited with her
work, and flushed now with the surprise of Rodney's coming in.

"How pretty you are going to look here," said Rodney, glancing
about.

The carpet Sylvie had chosen to keep for the parlor--for though Mrs.
Argenter had feebly discussed and ostensibly dictated the list as
Sylvie wrote it down, she had really given up all choosing to her
with a reiterated, helpless, "As you please," at every question that
came up--was a small figured Brussels of a soft, shadowy water-gray,
with a border in an arabesque pattern. This had been upon a guest
chamber; the winter carpet of the drawing-room was an Axminster, and
Sylvie's ideas did not base themselves on Axminsters now, even if
they might have done so with a two thousand dollar allowance. She
only hoped her mother would not feel as if there were no drawing
room at all, but the whole house had been put up-stairs.

The window draperies were as I have said; there was a large, plain
library table in the middle of the room, with books and baskets and
little easels with pictures, and paper weights and folders, and
other such like small articles of use and grace and cosy expression
lying about upon it, as if people had been there quite a while and
grown at home. There were bronze candelabra on the mantel and upon
brackets each side the bay window. Pictures were already
hung,--portraits, and gifts, not included in the schedule,--a few
nice engravings, and one glowing piece of color, by Mrs. Murray,
which Sylvie said was like a fire in the room.

"I am only afraid it is too fine," said she, replying to Rodney. "I
really want to be like our neighbors,--to _be_ a neighbor. We belong
here now. People should not drop out of the world, between the
ranks, when changes happen; they can't change out of humanity. Do
you know, Mr. Sherrett,--if it wasn't for the thought of my poor
father, and my mother not caring about anything any more,--I know I
should enjoy the chance of being a village girl?"

"You'll be a village girl, I imagine, as your parlor is a village
parlor. All in good faith, but wearing the rue with a difference."

"I don't mean to. I've been thinking,--_ever_ so much, and I've
found out a good many things. It's this not falling _on_ to anything
that keeps people in the misery of falling. I mean to come to land,
right here. I guess I preexisted as a barefoot maiden. There's a
kind of homeishness about it, that there never was in being elegant.
I wonder if I _have_ got anything in here that has no business?"

"Not a scrap. I've no doubt the blacksmith's wife's parlor is
finer. But you can't put the _character_ out."

"I mean to have plants, now; in this bay window. I guess I can, now
that we have no conservatory. Village people always have plants in
their windows, and mother won't want to see the street staring in."

"Have you brought some?"

"How could I? Those great oranges and daphnes? No: I shall have
little window plants and raise them."

"But meanwhile, won't the street be staring in?"

"Well, we can keep the blinds shut, for the warm weather."

"Amy will come and see you, when you are settled; Amy and Aunt
Euphrasia; you'll let them, won't you? You don't mean to be such a
violent village girl as to cut all your old friends?"

"Old friends?" Sylvie repeated, thoughtfully "Well, it does seem
almost old. But I didn't think I knew any of you _very_ well, only a
little while ago."

"Until the overturns," said Rodney. "It takes a shaking up, I
suppose, sometimes, to set things right. That's what the Shaker
people believe has got to be generally. Do you know, the
Scotch--Aunt Euphrasia is Scotch--have a way of using the word
'upset' to mean 'set up.' I think that is what you make it mean,
Miss Sylvie. I understand the philosophy of it now. I got my first
illustration when I tipped you out there at the baker's door."

"You tipped me out into one of the nicest places I ever was in. I've
no doubt it was a piece of the preparation. I mean to have Ray
Ingraham for my intimate friend."

Rodney Sherrett did not say anything immediately to this. He sat on
the low cricket upon which he had placed himself near the door,
turning his soft felt hat over and over between his hands. He was
not quite ready to perceive as yet, that the baker's daughter was
just the person for Sylvie Argenter's intimate friend; and he had a
dim suspicion, likewise, that there was something in the girl
constitution that prevented the being able to have more than one
intimate friend.

He repeated presently his assurance that Amy and Aunt Euphrasia
would come over to see them, and took himself off, saying that he
knew he must have been horribly in the way all the time.

The next morning, a light covered wagon, driven by Mr. Sherrett's
man, Rodgers, came up the Turn. There was nobody at the red-roofed
house so early, and he set down in the front porch what he took
carefully, one at a time, from the vehicle,--some two dozen lovely
greenhouse plants, newly potted from the choicest and most
flourishing growth of the season.

When Sylvie and Sabina came round from the ten o'clock street car,
they stumbled suddenly upon this beauty that incumbered the
entrance. To a branch of glossy green, luxuriant ivy was tied a
card,--

          "RODNEY SHERRETT,
                With friendly compliments."

Sylvie really sung at her work to-day, placing and replacing till
she had grouped the whole in her wire frames in the bay window so as
to show every leaf and spray in light and line aright.

"Why, it is prettier than it ever was at the old place; isn't it
Sabina? It's full and perfect; and that was always a great
barrenness of glass. The street can't stare in now. I think mother
will be able to forget that there is even a street at all."

"It's real nobby," said Sabina.

The room was all soft green and gray: green rep chairs and sofa,
green topped library table; green piano cover; green inside blinds;
a green velvet grape leaf border around the gray papered walls.

Sabina, though a very elegant housemaid, patronized and approved
cheerfully. She was satisfied with the new home. There had not been
a word of leaving since it was decided upon. She had her reasons.
Sabina was "promised to be married" next spring. Dignity in her
profession was not so much of an object meantime, nor even wages;
she had laid up money and secured her standing, living always in the
first families; she could afford to take it in a quiet way; "it
wouldn't be so bothering nor so dressy;" Sabina had a saving turn
with her best things, that spared both trouble and money. Besides,
her kitchen windows and the back door suited her; they looked across
a bit of unoccupied land to the back street where the cabinet-shop
buildings were. Sabina was going to marry into the veneering
profession.




CHAPTER VI.

A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR.


Mr. Ingraham, the baker, did not die that day when the doctor's
chaise stood at the door, and all the children in the village were
sent in for brick loaves. He was only struck down helpless; to lie
there and be waited on; to linger, and wonder why he lingered; to
feel himself in the way, and a burden; to get used to all this, and
submit to it, and before he died to see that it had been all right.

The bakery lease had yet two years to run. It might have been sold
out, but that would have involved a breaking up and a move, which
Ingraham himself was not fit to bear, and his wife and daughters
were not willing to think of yet.

Rachel quietly said,--as soon as her father was so far restored and
comfortable that he could think and speak of things with them,--

"I can go on with the bakehouse. I know how. The men will all stay.
I spoke to them Saturday night."

Ray kept the accounts, and when Saturday night came, the first after
the misfortune fell upon them, she called all the journeymen into
the little bakery office, where she sat upon the high stool at her
father's desk. She gave each his week's wages, asking each one, as
he signed his name in receipt, to wait a minute. Then she told them
all, that she meant, if her father consented, to keep on with the
business.

"He may get well," she said. "Will you all stand by and help me?"

"'Deed and we wull," said Irish Martin, the newest, the smallest,
and the stupidest--if a quick heart and a willing will can be
stupid--of them all. Some stupidity is only brightness not properly
hitched on.

Ray found that she had to go on making brick loaves, however. She
must keep her men; she could not expect to train them all to new
ways; she must not make radical experiments in this trust-work, done
for her father, to hold things as they were for him. Brick loaves,
family loaves, rolls, brown bread, crackers, cookies, these had to
be made as the journeymen knew how; as bakers' men had made them
ever since and before Mother Goose wrote the dear old pat-a-cake
rhyme.

Ray wondered why, when everybody liked home bread and home cake,--if
they could stop to make them and knew how,--home bread and cake
could not be made in big bakehouse ovens also, and by the quantity.
She thought this was one of the things women might be able to do
better than men; one of the bits of world business that women forced
to work outside of homes might accomplish. Once, men had been
necessary for the big, heavy, multiplied labor; now, there was
machinery to help, for kneading, for rolling; there was steam for
baking, even; there were no longer the great caverns to be filled
with fire-wood, and cleared by brawny, seasoned arms, when the
breath of them was like the breath of the furnace seven times
heated, in which walked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Ray had often thoughts to herself; thoughts here and there, that
touched from fresh sides the great agitations of the day, which she
felt instinctively were beginning wrong and foremost. "I _will_
work; I _will_ speak," cry the women. Very well; what hinders, if
you have anything really to do, really to say? Opportunities are
widening in the very nature and development of things; they are
showing themselves at many a turn; but they give definite business,
here and there; they quiet down those who take real hold. Outcry is
no business; that is why the idle women take to it, and will do
nothing else. It is not they who are moving the world forward to the
clear sun-rising of the good day that must shine. People whose
shoulders are at steady, small, unnoticed wheels are doing that.

Dot stayed in the house and helped her mother. She had a
sewing-machine also, and she took in work from the neighbors, and
from ladies like Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, and Mrs. Greenleaf, and
Mrs. Farland, who drove over to bring it from Roxeter, and East
Mills, and River Point.

"Why don't you call and see me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when
she had walked over to the shop with a small basket, in which to put
brown bread, little fine rolls for her mother, and some sugar
cookies. Ray and Dot were both there. Dot was sitting with her
sewing, putting in finishing stitches, button-holes, and the like.
She was behind the counter, ready to mind the calls. Ray had come in
to see what was wanting of fresh supplies from the bakehouse.

"I've been expecting you ever since we moved into the Turn. Ain't I
to have any neighbors?"

The little court-way behind the Bank had come to be called the Turn;
Sylvie took the name as she found it; as it named itself to her also
in the first place, before she knew that others called it so. She
liked it; it was one of those names that tell just what a thing is;
that have made English nomenclature of places, in the old, original
land above all, so quaint and full of pleasant home expression.

Dot looked up in surprise. It had never entered her head that the
Argenters would expect them to call; and truly, the Argenters, in
the plural, were very far indeed from any such imagination.

Ray took it more quietly and coolly.

"We are always very busy, since my father has been sick," she said.
"We hardly go to see our old friends. But if you would like it, we
will try and come, some day."

"I want you to," said Sylvie. "But I don't want you to _call_,
though I said so. I want you to come right in and _see_ me. I never
could bear calls, and I don't mean ever to begin with them again."

The Highfords had come and "called," in the carriage, with pearl-kid
gloves and long-tailed carriage dresses; called in such a way that
Sylvie knew they would probably never call again. It was a last
shading off of the old acquaintance; a decent remembrance of them in
their low estate, just not to be snobbish on the vulgar face of it;
a visit that had sent her mother to bed with a mortified and
exasperated headache, and taken away her slight appetite for the
delicate little "tea" that Sylvie brought up to her on a tray.

The Ingrahams saw she really meant it, and they came in one evening
at first, when they were walking by, and Sylvie sat alone, with a
book, in the twilight, on the corner piazza. Her mother had been
there; her easy-chair stood beside the open window, but she had gone
in and lain down upon the sofa. Mrs. Argenter had drooped,
physically, ever since the grief and change. It depends upon what
one's life is, and where is the spring of it, and what it feeds
upon, how one rallies from a shock of any sort. The ozone had been
taken out of her atmosphere. There was nothing in all the sweet
sunshine of generous days, or the rest of calm-brooding nights, to
restore her, or to belong to her any more. She had nothing to
breathe. She had nothing to grow to, or to put herself in rapport
with. She was out of relation with all the great, full world.

"Whom did you have there?" she asked Sylvie, when Ray and Dot were
gone, and she came in to see if her mother would like anything.

"The Ingrahams, mother; our neighbors, you know; they are nice
girls; I like them. And they were very kind to me the day of my
accident, you remember. I called first, you see! And besides," she
added, loving the whole truth, "I told them the other morning I
should like them to come."

"I don't suppose it makes any difference," Mrs. Argenter answered,
listlessly, turning her head away upon the sofa cushion.

"It makes the difference, Amata," said Sylvie, with a bright
gentleness, and touching her mother's pretty hair with a tender
finger, "that I shall be a great deal happier and better to know
such girls; people we have got to live amongst, and ought to live a
little like. You can't think how pleasant it was to talk with them.
All my life it has seemed as if I never really got hold of people."

"You certainly forget the Sherretts."

"No, I don't. But I never got hold of them much while I was just
edging alongside. I think some people grasp hands the better for a
little space to reach across. You mayn't be born quite in the
purple, as Susan Nipper would say, but it isn't any reason you
should try to pinch yourself black and blue. I've got all over it,
and I like the russet a great deal better. I wish you could."

"I can't begin again," said Mrs. Argenter. "My life is torn up by
the roots, and there is the end of it."

It was true. Sylvie felt that it was so, as her mother spoke, and
she reproached herself for her own light content. How could her
mother make intimacy with Mrs. Knoxwell, the old blacksmith's wife,
or Mrs. Pevear, the carriage-painter's? Or even good, homely Mrs.
Ingraham, over the bake-shop? It is so much easier for girls to come
together; girls of this day, especially, who in all classes get so
much more of the same things than their mothers did.

Sylvie, authorized by this feeble acquiescence in what made "no
difference," went on with her intention of having Ray Ingraham for
her intimate friend. She spent many an hour, as the summer wore
away, at the time in the afternoon when Mrs. Argenter was always
lying down, in the pleasant bedroom over the shop, that looked out
under the elm-tree. This was Ray Ingraham's leisure also; the bread
carts did not come in till tea time, with their returns and orders;
the day's second baking was in the oven; she had an hour or two of
quiet between the noon business and the night; then she was always
glad to see Sylvie Argenter come down the street with her little
purple straw work-basket swinging from her forefinger, or a book in
her hand. Sylvie and Ray read new books together from the Dorbury
library, and old ones from Mrs. Argenter's book-shelves. Dot was not
so often with them; her leisure was given more to her flower beds,
where all sorts of blooms,--bright petunias and verbenas, delicate
sweet peas and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy
deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and
rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised
on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged
things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,--made a glory
and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the
grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery,
against which grew, appropriately enough, some strings of hop vines.

"I think it is just the nicest place in the world," said Sylvie, in
her girlish, unqualified speech, as they all stood there one
evening, while Dot was cutting a bouquet for Sylvie's mother.
"People that set out to have everything beautiful, get the same
things over and over; graveled drives and a smooth lawn, and trees
put into groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a
view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a
peep at the hills. But you are right down _amongst_ such niceness!
There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling
along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down
the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the
shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had
all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good
time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate
properness, as people do who 'go into society.' And the new bread
smells so sweet! I think it's what-for and because that make it so
much better. Somebody came here to _do_ something; and the rest
was, and happened, and grew. I can't bear things fixed up to be
exquisite!"

"That is the real doctrine of the kingdom of heaven," said a sweet,
cheery voice behind them. They all turned round; Miss Euphrasia
Kirkbright stood upon the door-stone.

"Being and doing. Then the surrounding is born out of the living.
The Lord, up there, lets the saints make their own glory."

"Then you don't think the golden streets are all paved hard,
beforehand?" said Sylvie. She understood Miss Euphrasia, and chimed
quickly into her key. She had had talks with her before this, and
she liked them.

"No more than that," said Miss Kirkbright, pointing to the golden
flush under the soft, piling clouds in the west, that showed in
glimpses beneath the arches of the trees and across the openings
behind the village buildings. "'New every morning, and fresh every
evening.' Doesn't He show us how it is, every day's work that He
himself begins and ends?"

"Do you think we shall ever live like that?" asked Ray Ingraham,
perceiving.

"'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of
their Father,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. "And the shining of the sun
makes his worlds around him, doesn't it? We shall create outside of
us whatever is in us. We do it now, more than we know. We shall find
it all, by and by, ready,--whatever we think we have missed; the
building not made with hands."

"I'm afraid we shall find ourselves in queer places, some of us,"
said Dot. Dot had a way of putting little round, practical periods
to things. She did not do it with intent to be smart, or
epigrammatic. She simply announced her own most obvious conclusion.

"'The first last, and the last first.' That is a part of the same
thing. The rich man and Lazarus; knowing as we are known; being
clothed upon; unclothed and not found naked; the wedding garment.
You cannot touch one link of spiritual fact, without drawing a whole
chain after it. Some other time, laying hold somewhere else, the
same sayings will be brought to mind again, to confirm the new
thought. It is all alive, breathing; spirit in atoms, given to move
and crystallize to whatever central magnetism, always showing some
fresh phase of what is one and everlasting."

Miss Euphrasia could no more help talking so--given the right
circumstances to draw her forth--than she could help breathing. Her
whole nature was fluid to the truth, as the atoms she spoke of.
Talking with her, you saw, as in a divine kaleidoscope, the gleams
and shiftings and combinings of heavenly and internal things; shown
in simplest movings and relations of most real and every day
experience and incident.

But she never went on--and "went over," exhorting. She did not
believe in _discourses_, she said, even from the pulpit--very much.
She believed in a _sermon_, and letting it go. And a sermon is just
a word; as the Word gives itself, in some fresh manna-particle, to
any soul.

So when the girls stood silent, as girls will, not knowing how to
break a pause that has come upon such speaking, she broke it
herself, with a very simple question; a question of mere little
business that she had come to ask Dot.

"Were the little under-kerchiefs done?"

It was just the same sweet, cheery tone; she dropped nothing, she
took up nothing, turning from the inward to the outside. It was all
one quiet, harmonious sense of wholeness; living, and expression of
living. That was what made Miss Euphrasia's "words" chord so
pleasantly, always, without any jar, upon whatever string was being
played; and the impulse and echo of them to run on through the music
afterward, as one clear bell-stroke marking an accent, will seem to
send its lingering impression through the unaccented measures
following.

Dot went into the house and got the things; fine cambric
neck-covers, frilled around the throat with delicate lace. She
folded them small, and put them in a soft paper. Miss Kirkbright
took the parcel, and paid Dot the money for her work; she gave her
three dollars. Then she said to Sylvie,--

"Will you walk as far as the car corner with me? I have missed a
real call that I meant to have had with you. I have been to your
house."

"Did you see mother?" Sylvie asked, as they walked on, having said
good-by, and passed out through the shop.

"No: Sabina said she was lying down, and I would not have her
disturbed. I came partly to tell you a little news. Amy is engaged
to Mr. Robert Truesdaile. They will be married in the fall, and go
out to England. He has relatives there; his mother's family. There
is an uncle living near Manchester; a large cotton manufacturer; he
would like to take his nephew into the business; he has a great
desire to get him there and make an Englishman of him."

"Does Amy like it? I mean, going to England? I am ever so glad for
her being so happy."

"Yes, she likes it. At any rate she likes, as we all do, the new
pleasant beginnings. We are all made to like fresh corners to turn,
unless they seem very dark ones, or unless we have grown very old
and tired, which _I_ think there is never any need of doing."

"How busy she will be!" was Sylvie's next remark, made after a pause
in which she realized to herself the news, and received also a
little suggestion from it.

"Yes, pretty busy. But such preparations are made easily in these
days."

"Won't there be ever so many little things of that sort to be
done?" asked Sylvie, signifying the parcel which Miss Kirkbright
held lightly in her fingers. "I wish I could do some of them. I
mean,"--she gathered herself up bravely to say,--"I should like
dearly to do _anything_ for Amy; but I have thought it would be a
good plan--if I could--to do something like that for the sake of
earning; as Dot Ingraham does."

"Do you not have quite enough money, my dear?" asked Miss
Kirkbright, in her kindly direct way that could never hurt.

"Not quite. At least, it don't seem to go very far. There are always
things that we didn't expect. And things count up so at the
grocer's. And a little nice meat every day,--which we _have_ to
have,--turns out so very expensive. And Sabina's wages--and mother's
wine--and cream--and fresh eggs,--I get so worried when the bills
come in!"

Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling
her money and housekeeping troubles.

"Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just
as much as I can do,--of those kinds of work,--and a poor girl would
waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much,
myself. If Sabina were to go,--and she will next spring,--I am
afraid it would turn out that we should have to keep two."

For all Sylvie's little "afternoons out," it was very certain that
she, and Sabina also, did have their hands full at home. It is
wonderful how much work one person, who _does_ none of it and who
must live fastidiously, can make in a small household. From Mrs.
Argenter's hot water, and large bath, and late breakfast in the
morning to her glass of milk at nine o'clock at night, which she
never _could_ remember to carry up herself from the tea-table,--she
needed one person constantly to look after her individual wants. And
she couldn't help it, poor lady, either; that is the worst of it;
one gets so as not to be able to help things; "it was the shape of
her head," Sabina said, in a phrase she had learned of the
cabinet-maker.

"You shall have anything you can do; just as Dot does," said Miss
Euphrasia. "And Amy will like it all the better for your doing. You
can put the love into the work, as much as we shall into the pay."

Was there ever anybody who handled the bare facts of life so
graciously as this Miss Euphrasia? She did it by taking right hold
of them, by their honest handles,--as they were meant to be taken
hold of.

"You like your home? You haven't grown tired of being a village
girl?" she said, as she and Sylvie sat down on a great flat
projecting rock in the shaded walk beside the railroad track. They
had just missed one car; there would not be another for twenty
minutes.

"O, yes. No; I haven't got tired; but I don't feel as if I had quite
_been it_, yet. I don't think I am exactly that, or anything, now.
That is the worst of it. People don't understand. They won't take us
in,--all of them. It's just as hard to get into a village, if you
weren't born in it, as it is to get into upper-ten-dom. Mrs.
Knoxwell called, and looked round all the time with her nose up in a
sort of a way,--well, it _was_ just like a dog sniffing round for
something. And she went off and told about mother's poor, dear, old,
black silk dress, that I made into a cool skirt and jacket for her.
'Some folks must be always set up in silk, she _sposed_.' Everybody
isn't like the Ingrahams."

"No garment of _this_ life fits exactly. There was only one
seamless robe. But we mustn't take thought for raiment, you see. The
body is more. And at last,--somehow, sometime,--we shall be all
clothed perfectly--with his righteousness."

This was too swift and light in its spiritual touching and linking
for Sylvie to follow. She had to ask, as the disciples did, for a
meaning.

"It isn't clothes that I am thinking of, or that trouble me; or any
outside. And I know it isn't actual clothes you mean. Please tell me
plainer, Miss Euphrasia."

"I mean that I think He meant by 'raiment,' not _clothes_ so much as
_life_; what we put on or have put on to us; what each soul wears
and moves in, to feel itself by and to be manifest; history,
circumstance. 'Raiment,'--'garment,'--the words always stand for
this, beyond their temporary and technical sense. 'He laid aside his
_garment_,'--He gave up his own life that He might have been
living,--to come and wash our feet!"

"And the people cast their garments before Him, when He rode into
Jerusalem," Sylvie said presently.

"Yes; that is the way He must come into his kingdom, and lead us
with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we
lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will
give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it
will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves.
And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we
shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness but
rightness?"

"I thought it only meant goodness. That we hadn't any goodness of
our own; that we mustn't trust in it, you know?"

"But that his, by faith, is to cover us? That is the old
letter-doctrine, which men didn't look through to see how graciously
true it is, and how it gives them all things. For it _is things_
they want, all the time; realities, of experience and having. They
talk about an abstract 'justification by faith,' and struggle for an
abstract experience; not seeing how good God is to tell them plainly
that his 'justifying' is _setting everything right_ for them, and
round them, and in them: his _rightness_ is sufficient for them;
they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own. The minute
they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for
them as no working of their own could do. God doesn't forgive a soul
ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings
forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes
for the feet. People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of
regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead. The Lord
heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He _knows_
that we have _need_," Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly.
"Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as
people run for their lives from fire or flood."

Sylvie had listened with a shining face.

"You get it all from that one word,--'raiment.' Your words--the
words you find out, Miss Kirkbright--are living things."

"Yes, words _are_ living things," Miss Kirkbright answered. "God
does not give us anything dead. But the life of them is his spirit,
and his spirit is an instant breath. You can take them as if they
were dead, if you do not inspire. Men who wrote these words,
inspired. We talk about their _being_ inspired, as if it were a
passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe
ourselves. It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given
over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never
need trouble any more about authority. We shall only thank God that
He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the
more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand
their speech."

"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'--that words in the Bible
stand for,--Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?"

"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled.

"Are you a Swedenborgian?" Sylvie asked the question timidly.

"I believe in the New Church," answered Miss Euphrasia. "But I don't
believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system. I believe in
it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming
into them. I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to
worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin. We
should do that without any name. The Lord gave a great deal to
Swedenborg: but when his time comes, He doesn't give all in any one
place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the
one part to the other part under heaven. _Lightening_--not
lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think. He set the sun in the
sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day
after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night
after night showeth knowledge. I believe in the fuller, more inward
dispensation. Swedenborg illustrated it,--received it, wonderfully;
but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having
heard of Swedenborg. For that reason, we may never be afraid about
the truth. It is not here or there. This or that may fail or pass
away, but the Word shall never pass away."

"What a long talk we have had! How did we get into it?"

The car was coming up the slope, half a mile off. They could see the
red top of it rising, and could hear the tinkle of the bell.

"I wish we didn't need to get out!" said Sylvie. "I wish I could
tell it to my mother!"

"Can't you?"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't keep alive,--with me," Sylvie answered, with
a little sigh and shadow. "Not even as these flowers will that I am
taking to her. I can take,--but I can't give, and I always feel so
that I ought to. Mother needs the comfort of it. Why don't you come
and talk to her, Miss Kirkbright?"

"Talk on purpose never does. You and I 'got into it,' as you say.
Perhaps your mother and I might. But I have got over feeling about
such sort of giving--in words--as a duty. Even with people whom I
work among sometimes, who need the very first gift of truth, so
much! We can only keep near and dear to each other, Sylvie, and near
and dear to the Lord. Then there are the two lines; and things that
are equal--or similarly related--to the same thing, are related to
one another. He can make the mark that proves and joins, any time.
Did you know there was Bible in geometry, Sylvie? I very often go to
my old school Euclid for a heavenly comfort."

"I think you go to everything for it--and to everybody with it,"
said Sylvie, squeezing her friend's hand as he left her on the
car-step.

Nothing comes much before we need it. This talk stayed by Sylvie
through months afterwards, if not the word of it, always the subtle
cheer and strength of it, that nestled into her heart underneath all
her upper thinkings and cares of day by day, and would not quite let
them settle down upon the living core of it with a hopeless
pressure.

For the real stress of her new life was bearing upon her heavily.
The first poetry, the first fresh touches with which she had made
pleasant signs about their altered condition, were passed into
established use, and dulled into wornness and commonness. The
difficulties--the grapples--came thick and forceful about her. At
the same time, her reliances seemed slipping away from her.

She had hardly known, any more than her mother, how much the
countenance and friendliness of the Sherrett family had done in
upholding her. It was a link with the old things--the very best of
the old things,--that stood as a continual assurance that they
themselves were not altered--lowered in any way--by their alterings.
This came to Sylvie with an interior confirmation, as it did to Mrs.
Argenter exteriorly. So long as Miss Kirkbright and the Sherretts
indorsed anything, it could not harm them much, or fence them out
altogether from what they had been. Amy Sherrett and Miss Kirkbright
thought well of the Ingrahams, and maintained all their dealings
with them in a friendly--even intimate--fashion. If Sylvie chose to
sit with them of an afternoon, it was no more than Miss Euphrasia
did. Also, the old Miss Goodwyns, who lived up the Turn behind the
maples, were privileged to offer Miss Kirkbright a cup of tea when
she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over
knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might
well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her
window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs.
Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the
relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts
and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart
somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to
Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could
find little other.

Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs.
Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and
thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,--that she had
these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after
all, pretty hard to endure.

The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly
neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and
the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as
she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not
draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt
bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward
Dot and Ray.

Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never
went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her
sister,--Aunt Lora, the tailoress,--and her son, the young
carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and
discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village--what
shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a
village beau? A village _desirable_ he was, at any rate. Of course,
Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a
voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared
mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's
proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew
beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between
the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally
and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took
in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though
the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all
these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social
"laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic
benediction, all the way down.

I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie
nor her mother had known how far their comfort and acquiescence in
their new life had depended on the "backing up" of the Sherretts.
This they found out when the Sherretts went away that autumn. Amy
was married in October and sailed for England; Rodney was at
Cambridge, and when the country house at Roxeter was closed, Miss
Euphrasia took rooms in Boston for the winter, where her winter work
all lay, and Mr. Sherrett, who was a Representative to Congress,
went to Washington for the session. There were no more calls; no
more pleasant spending of occasional days at the Sherrett Place; no
more ridings round and droppings in of Rodney at the village. All
that seemed suddenly broken up and done with, almost hopelessly.
Sylvie could not see how it was ever to begin again. Next year
Rodney was to graduate, and his father was to take him abroad. These
plans had come out in the talks over Amy's marriage and her leaving
home.

Sylvie was left to her village; she could only go in to the Miss
Goodwyns and down to the bakery; and now that her condescensions
were unlinked from those of Miss Kirkbright, and just dropped into
next-door matter of course, Mrs. Argenter fretted. Marion Kent would
come calling, too, and talk about Mrs. Browning, and borrow
patterns, and ask Sylvie "how she hitched up her Marguerite."

[In case this story should ever be read after the fashion I allude
to shall have disappeared from the catalogues of Butterick and
Demorest, to be never more mentioned or remembered, I will explain
that it is a style of upper dress most eminently un-daisy-like in
expression and effect, and reminding of no field simplicities
whatsoever, unless possibly of a hay-load; being so very much
pitch-forked up into heaps behind.]

Not that Sylvie dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been
growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of
her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine
and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the
slang phrase "piling on the agony." But Marion Kent came to Sylvie
for the first idea of her light loops and touches: then she
developed it, as her sort do, tremendously; she did grandly by the
yard, what Sylvie Argenter did modestly by the quarter; she had a
soul beyond mere nips and pinches. But this was small vexation, to
be caricatured by Miss Kent. Sylvie's real troubles came closer and
harder.

Sabina Bowen went away.

She had not meant to be married until the spring; but she and the
cabinet-maker had had their eyes upon a certain half-house,--neat
and pretty, with clean brown paint and a little enticing gingerbread
work about the eaves and porch,--which was to be vacated at that
time; and it happened that, through some unforeseen circumstances,
the family occupying it became suddenly desirous to get rid of the
remainder of their lease, and move this winter. John came to Sabina
eagerly one evening with the news.

Sabina thought of the long winter evenings, and the bright
double-burner kerosene she had saved up money for; of a little round
table with a red cloth, and John one side of it and she the other;
of sitting together in a pew, and going every Sunday in her
bride-bonnet, instead of getting her every-other-Sunday forenoon and
hurrying home to fricassee Mrs. Argenter's chicken or sweet-bread,
and boil her cauliflower; and so she gave warning the next morning
when she was emptying Mrs. Argenter's bath and picking up the
towels. She steeled herself wisely with choice of time and person;
it would have been hard to tell Miss Sylvie when she came down to
dust the parlor, or into the kitchen to make the little dessert for
dinner.

And now poor Sylvie fell into and floundered in that slough of
despond, the lower stratum of the Irish kitchen element, which if
one once meddles with, it is almost hopeless to get out of; and one
very soon finds that to get out of it is the only hope, forlorn as
it may be.

She had one girl who made sour bread for a fortnight, and then
flounced off on a Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs,
because "her bread was never faulted before, an' faith, she wudn't
pit up biscuits of a Sunday night no more for annybody!" The next
one disposed of all the dish towels in four days, behind barrels and
in the corners of the kettle closet, and complained insolently of
ill furnishing; a third kindled her fire with the clothes-pins; a
fourth wore Mrs. Argenter's cambric skirts on Sunday, "for a finish,
jist to make 'em worth while for the washin'," and trod out the
heels of three pairs of Sylvie's best stockings, for a like
considerate and economical reason. Another declined peremptorily the
use of a flat-iron stand, and burnt out triangular pieces from the
ironing sheet and blanket; and when Sylvie remonstrated with her
about the skirt-board, which she had newly covered, finding her
using it as a cleaning cloth after she had heated her "flats" upon
the coals, she was met with a torrent of abuse, and the assurance
that she "might get somebody else to save her old rags with their
apurns, an' iron five white skirts and tin pairs o' undersleeves a
week for two women, at three dollars an' a half. She had heard
enough about the place or iver she kim intil it, an' the bigger fool
she iver to iv set her fut inside the dooers."

That was it. It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place
before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was
no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the
village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices.
By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent
servant into. They came, and looked, and went away; half-dozens of
them. The stove was burnt out; there was a hole through into the
oven; nothing but an entire new one would do, and a new one would
cost forty dollars. Poor Sylvie toiled and worried; she went to Mrs.
Ingraham and the Miss Goodwyns, and Sabina Galvin, for advice; she
made ash-paste and cemented up the breaches, she hired a woman by
the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All
this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled
underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any
plain things, and she couldn't get new, and she must be clean."

At New Year's, they owed three hundred dollars that they could not
pay, beside the quarter's rent. They had to take it out of their
little invested capital; they sold ten shares of railroad stock at a
poor time; it brought them eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.
They bought their new stove, and some other things; they hired, at
last, two girls for the winter, at three dollars and two and a half,
respectively; this was a saving to what they had been doing, and
they must get through the cold weather somehow. Besides, Mrs.
Argenter was now seriously out of health. She had had nothing to do
but to fall sick under her troubles, and she had honestly and
effectually done it.

But how should they manage another year, and another? How long would
they have any income, if such a piece was to be taken out of the
principal every six months?

In the spring, Mrs. Argenter declared it was of no use; they must
give up and go to board. They ought to have done it in the first
place. Plenty of people got along so with no more than they had. A
cheap place in the country for the summer would save up to pay for
rooms in town for the winter. She couldn't bear another hot season
in that village,--nor a cold one, either. A second winter would be
just madness. What could two women do, who had never had anything to
provide before, with getting in coal, and wood, and vegetables, and
everything, and snow to be shoveled, and ashes sifted, and fires to
make, and girls going off every Monday morning?

She had just enough reason, as the case stood, for Sylvie not to be
able to answer a word. But the lease,--for another year? What should
they do with that? Would Mr. Frost take it off their hands?

If Sylvie had known who really stood behind Mr. Frost, and how!

The little poem of village living,--of home simpleness and frugal
prettiness,--of _that_, the two first lines alone had rhymed!

They had entered upon the last quarter of their first year when they
came to this united and definite conclusion. That month of May was
harsh and stormy. Nothing could be done about moving until clearer
and finer weather. So the rent was continued, of course, until the
year expired, and in June they would pack up and go away.

Sylvie had been to the doctor, first, and told him about her mother;
and he had called, in a half-friendly, half-professional way, to see
her. After his call, he had had an honest talk with Sylvie.

God sometimes shows us a glimpse of a future trouble that He holds
in his hand, to neutralize the trouble we are immediately under;
even, it may be, to turn it into a quietness and content. When
Sylvie had heard all that Doctor Sainswell had to say, she put away
her money anxiety from off her mind, at once and finally. Nothing
was any matter now, but that her mother should go where she
would,--have what she wanted.

Then she went to see Mr. Frost.

"He would write to his employer," he said; he could not give an
answer of himself.

The answer came in five days. They might relinquish the house at any
moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy.
It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily.

Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out.
She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett's face when
he read his agent's letter and replied to it in those three lines
without moving from his seat.

"I might have expected it," he said to himself. "She's a child after
all. But she began so bravely! And it can't help being worse by and
by. Well, one can't live people's lives for them." And he turned
back to his other papers,--his notes of yesterday's debate in the
House.

       *       *       *       *       *

Early in June, there came lovely days.

Sylvie was very busy. She had kept her two girls with her to the
end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the
remainder of their stay. She had the whole house to go over; even a
year's accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and
dispose of everything anew. She began with the attic; the trunks and
the boxes. She had to give away a great deal that would have been of
service had they continued to live quietly on. Two old proverbs
asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying
themselves over to her as she worked: "A rolling stone gathers no
moss;" "Three removes are as bad as a fire."

She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own
rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one
afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost
shelves of her mother's wardrobe, with little fear of any but
village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and
names were suddenly announced.

"Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!"

Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have
said. She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang
to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry.

"What _shall_ I do? Give me your hand, Katy! And where on earth _is_
my other dress? Can't you learn to get names right ever, Katy? Miss
Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett. Say I will be down presently. O, what
hair!"

She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust
in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged
black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all
right. Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that
cloudiness beneath which they shone.

Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and
told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them. For she remembered
then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed
to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful
spring.

"We are going away, you see," she told her presently. "Mother must
have a change. It does not suit her here in any way. We are going to
Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in
the mountains, perhaps. In the winter, we shall have to board in the
city. Mother can't be worried any longer; she must have what she
wants."

Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed;
at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year
ago.

"What a care for you, dear! What will you do with everything?"

"We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some. Dot
Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston;
then I shall have them in our rooms. I hope the gas won't kill
them."

Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some
minutes. He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his
handsome eyes. All this was so different from anything he had
anticipated.

By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to
ask her for Class Day.

"I wouldn't just send a card for the spread," said he. "Aunt
Euphrasia wants you to go with her. I'm in the Reward of Merit list,
you see; I've earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter.
I've even got a part for Commencement. Only a translation; and it
probably won't be called; but wouldn't you like to hear it, if it
were?"

"O, I wish I could!" said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to
the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness
in letting her know. "I _wish_ I could! But we shall be gone."

"Not before Class Day?"

"Yes; just about then. I'm so sorry."

Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had "ground" for
nothing.

Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps
Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July. Miss Kirkbright told
Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge
of the White Mountain country; "among the great rolling hills that
lead you up and up," she said, "through whole counties of wonderful
wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be
crowded and profaned. It is a nook to hide away in when one gets
discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great
and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that
men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with
their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which
the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of
his grand, pure heights."

All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed
thoughts. They could not say them out; the invitation had been given
and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt
Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not
be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to
speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had
said--had done--nothing that they ought, or wanted to. And neither
knew it of the other; that was the worst.

When Rodney at last went out to untie his horse, Miss Euphrasia
turned round to Sylvie with a question.

"Is this all quite safe and easy for you, dear?"

"Yes," returned Sylvie, frankly, understanding her. "I have given up
all that worry. There is money enough for a good while if we don't
mind using it. And it is _mother's_ money; and Dr. Sainswell says
she _cannot_ have a long life."

Sylvie spoke the last sentence with a break; but her voice was clear
and calm,--only tender.

"And after that?" Miss Kirkbright asked, looking kindly into her
face.

"After that I shall do what I can; what other girls do, who haven't
money. When the time comes I shall see. All that comes hard to
me--after mother's feebleness--is the changing; the not staying of
anything anywhere. My life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss
Kirkbright. Nothing goes right on as if it belonged."

"'Lo, it is I; be not afraid,'" repeated Miss Kirkbright softly.
"When things work and change, in spite of us, we may know it is the
Lord working. That is the comfort,--the certainty."

The tenderness that had been in heart and voice sprang to tears in
Sylvie's eyes, at that word.

"How _do_ you think of such things?" she said, earnestly. "I shall
never forget that now."

Aunt Euphrasia could not help telling Rodney as they drove away
toward the city, how brave and good the child was. She could not
help it, although, wise woman that she was, she refrained carefully,
in most ways, from "putting things in his head."

"I knew it before," was Rodney's answer.

Aunt Euphrasia concluded, at that, in her own mind, that we may be
as old and as wise as we please, but in some things the young people
are before us; they need very little of our "putting in heads."

"Aunt Effie," said Rodney, presently, "do you think I have been a
very great good-for-nothing?"

"No, indeed. Why?"

"Well, I certainly haven't been good for much; and I'm not sure
whether I could be. I don't know exactly what to think of myself. I
haven't had anything to do with _horses_ this winter; I sent Red
Squirrel off into the country. What is the reason, Auntie, that if a
fellow takes to horses, they all think he is going straight to the
bad? What is there so abominable about them?"

"Nothing," said Miss Kirkbright. "On the contrary, everything grand
and splendid,--in _type_,--you know. Horses are powers; men are made
to handle powers, and to use them; it is the very manliest instinct
of a man by which he loves them. Only, he is terribly mistaken if he
stops there,--playing with the signs. He might as well ride a
stick, or drive a chair with worsted reins, as the little ones do,
all his life."

Rodney's face lit straight up; but for a whole mile he made no
answer. Then he said, as people do after a silence,--

"How quiet we are, all at once! But you have a way of finishing up
things, Aunt Euphrasia. You said all I wanted in about fifty words,
just now. I begin to see. It may be just because I _might_ do
something, that I haven't. Aunt Euphrasia, I've done being a boy,
and playing with reins. I'm going to be a man, and do some real
driving. Do you know, I think I'd better not go to Europe with my
father?"

"I don't _know_ that," returned Miss Kirkbright. "It might be; but
it is a thing to consider seriously, before you give it up. You
ought to be quite sure what you stay for."

"I won't stay for any nonsense. I mean to talk with him to-night."

"Talk with yourself, first, Rod; find yourself out, and then talk it
all out honestly with him."

Which advice--the first clause of it--Rodney proceeded instantly to
follow; he did not say another word all the way over the Mill Dam
and up Beacon Hill, and Aunt Euphrasia let him blessedly alone; one
of the few women, as she was, capable of doing that great and
passive thing.

When he had left her at her door, and driven his horse to the livery
stable, he went round to his father's rooms and took tea with him.

The meal over, he pushed back his chair, saying, "I want a talk with
you, father. Can I have it now? I must be back at Cambridge by ten."

Mr. Sherrett looked in his son's face. There was nothing there of
uncomfortableness,--of conscious bracing up to a difficult matter.
He repressed his first instinctive inquiry of "No scrape, I hope,
Rod?" The question was asked and answered between their eyes.

"Certainly, my boy," he said, rising. "Step in there; the man will
be up presently to take away these things."

The door stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond
which were sleeping and bath-rooms.

Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while
Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the
latter carefully in two, and lit one half.

"The thing is, father," said Rodney, not waiting for a formal
beginning after they should be closeted and seated,--"I've been
thinking that I'd better not go abroad, if you don't mind. I'm
rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,--before I
take it. It's time I was doing something. If I use up a year or more
in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I
ought to have got ahead a little by that time."

Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised. This was a new phase. He
wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it.

"Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?"

"No. I don't think I've much of a 'head-piece'--as Nurse Pond used
to say. At least, in the learned direction. I've just about enough
to do for a gentleman,--a _man_, I hope. But I _should_ like to take
hold of something and make it go. I'll tell you why, father. I want
to see what's in me in the first place; and then, I might want
something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn't
take care of myself--and more."

"Come in, Rodney, and shut the door."

After that, of course, we cannot listen.

They two sat together for almost two hours. In that time, Mr.
Sherrett was first discomposed; then set right upon one or two
little points that had puzzled and disappointed him, and to which
his son could furnish the key; then thoroughly roused and anxious at
this first dealing with his boy as a man, with all a man's hopes and
wishes quickening him to a serious purpose; at last, touched
sympathetically, as a good father must be, with the very desire of
his child, and the fears and uncertainties that may environ it. What
he suggested, what he proposed and promised, what was partly planned
to be afterward concluded in detail, did not transpire through that
heavy closed door; neither we, nor the white-jacketed serving-man,
can be at this moment the wiser. It will appear hereafter. When they
came out together at last, Mr. Sherrett was saying,--

"Two years, remember. Not a word of it, decisively, till then,--for
both your sakes."

"Let what will happen, father? You don't remember when you were
young."

"Don't I?" said his father, with emphasis, and a kindly smile. "If
anything happens, come to me. Meanwhile,--you may talk, if you like,
to Aunt Euphrasia. I'll trust her."

And so the Lord set this angel of his to watch over this thread of
our story.

We may leave it here for a while.




CHAPTER VII.

BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW.


          "Kroo! kroo! I've cramp in my legs,
           Sitting so long atop of my eggs!
           Never a minute for rest to snatch;
           I wonder when they are going to hatch!

          "Cluck! cluck! listen! tseep!
           Down in the nest there's a stir and a peep.
           Everything comes to its luck some day;
           I've got chickens! What will folks say?"

Bel Bree made that rhyme. It came into her head suddenly one
morning, sitting in her little bedroom window that looked right
over the grass yard into the open barn-door, where the hens
stalked in and out; and one, with three chickens, was at that
minute airing herself and her family that had just come out of
their shells into the world, and walked about already as if the
great big world was only there, just as they had of course
expected it to be. The hen was the most astonished. _She_ was just
old enough to begin to be able to be astonished. Her whole mind
expressed itself in that proud cluck, and pert, excited carriage.
She had done a wonderful thing, and she didn't know how she had
done it. Bel "read it like coarse print,"--as her step-mother was
wont to say of her own perspicacities,--and put it into jingle, as
she had a trick of doing with things.

Bel Bree lived in New Hampshire; fifteen miles from a railway; in
the curious region where the old times and the new touch each
other and mix up; where the women use towels, and table-cloths, and
bed-spreads, of their mothers' own hand-weaving, and hem their new
ones with sewing-machines brought by travelling agents to their
doors; where the men mow and rake their fields with modern
inventions, but only get their newspapers once a week; where the
"help" are neighbors' girls, who wear overskirts and high hats, and
sit at the table with the family; where there are rag carpets and
"painted chamber-sets;" where they feed calves and young turkeys,
and string apples to dry in the summer, and make wonderful patchwork
quilts, and wax flowers, and worsted work, perhaps, in the long
winters; where they go to church and to sewing societies from miles
about, over tremendous hills and pitches, with happy-go-lucky wagons
and harnesses that never come to grief; where they have few schools
and intermitted teaching, yet turn out, somehow, young men who work
their way into professions, and girls who take the world by
instinct, and understand a great deal perfectly well that is beyond
their practical reach; where the old Puritan stiffness keeps them
straight, but gets leavened in some marvelous way with the broader
and more generous thought of the time, and wears a geniality that it
is half unconscious of; the region where, if you are lucky enough to
get into it to know it, you find yourself, as Miss Euphrasia said,
encouraged and put in heart again about the world. Things are so
genuine; when they make a step forward, they are really there.

But Bel Bree was not very happy in her home, though she sat at the
window and made rhymes in half merry fashion; though she loved the
hills, and the lights, and the shadows, the sweet-blossoming springs
and the jeweled autumns, the sunsets, and the great rains, that set
all the wild little waterfalls prancing and calling to each other
among the ravines.

Bel had two lives; one that she lived in these things, and one
within the literal and prosaic limit of the farmhouse, where her
father, as farmers must, had married a smart second wife to "look
after matters."

Not that Mrs. Bree ever looked _after_ anything: nothing ever got
ahead of her; she "whewed round;" when she was "whewing," she
neither wanted Bel to hinder nor help; the child was left to
herself; to her idleness and her dreams; then she neglected
something that she might and ought to have done, and then there was
reproach, and hard speech; partly deserved, but running over into
that wherein she should not have been blamed,--the precinct of her
step-mother's own busy and self-arrogated functions. She was taunted
and censured for incapacity in that to which she was not admitted;
"her mother made ten cheeses a week, and flung them in her face,"
she said. On the other hand, Mrs. Bree said "Bel hadn't got a mite
of _snap_ to her." One might say that, perhaps, of an electric
battery, if the wrong poles were opposed. Mrs. Bree had not found
out where the "snap" lay in Bel's character. She never would find
out.

Bel longed, as human creatures who are discontent always do, to get
away. The world was big; there must be better things somewhere.

There was a pathos of weariness, and an inspiration of hope, in her
little rhyme about the hen.

Bel was named for her Aunt Belinda. Miss Belinda Bree came up for a
week, sometimes, in the summer, to the farm. All the rest of the
year she worked hard in the city. She put a good face upon it in
her talk among her old neighbors. She spoke of the grand streets,
the parades, Duke's balls,--for which she made dresses,--and
jubilees, of which she heard afar off,--as if she were part and
parcel of all Boston enterprise and magnificence. It was a great
thing, truly, to live in the Hub. Honestly, she had not got over it
since she came there, a raw country girl, and began her
apprenticeship to its wonders and to her own trade. She could not
turn a water faucet, nor light her gas, nor count the strokes of the
electric fire alarm, without feeling the grandeur of having
Cochituate turned on to wash her hands,--of making her one little
spark of the grand illumination under which the Three Hills shone
every night,--of dwelling within ear-shot and protection of the
quietly imposing system of wires and bells that worked by lightning
against a fierce element of daily danger. She was proud of
policemen; she was thrilled at the sound of steam-engines thundering
along the pavements; she felt as if she had a hand in it. When they
fired guns upon the Common, she could only listen and look out of
windows; the little boys ran and shouted for her in the streets;
that is what the little boys are for. Somebody must do the running
and the shouting to relieve the instincts of older and busier
people, who must pretend as if they didn't care.

All this kept Miss Belinda Bree from utterly wearing out at her dull
work in the great warerooms, or now and then at days' seamstressing
in families. It really keeps a great many people from wearing out.

Miss Bree's work _was_ dull. The days of her early "mantua making"
were over. Twenty years had made things very different in Boston.
The "nice families" had been more quiet then; the quietest of them
now cannot manage things as they did in those days; for the same
reason that you cannot buy old-fashioned "wearing" goods; they are
not in the market. "Sell and wear out; wear out and sell;" that is
the principle of to-day. You must do as the world does; there is no
other path cut through. If you travel, you must keep on night and
day, or wait twenty-four hours and start in the night again.

Nobody--or scarcely anybody--has a dress-maker now, in the old, cosy
way, of the old, cosy sort, staying a week, looking over the
wardrobes of the whole family, advising, cutting, altering,
remaking, getting into ever so much household interest and history
in the daily chat, and listening over daily work: sitting at the
same table; linking herself in with things, spring and fall, as the
leaves do with their goings and comings; or like the equinoxes, that
in March and September shut about us with friendly curtains of rain
for days, in which so much can be done in the big up-stairs room
with a cheerful fire, that is devoted to the rites and mysteries of
scissors and needle. We were always glad, I remember, when our
dress-making week fell in with the equinoctial.

But now, all poor Miss Bree's "best places" had slipped away from
her, and her life had changed. People go to great outfitting stores,
buy their goods, have themselves measured, and leave the whole thing
to result a week afterward in a big box sent home with everything
fitted and machined and finished, with the last inventions and
accumulations of frills, tucks, and reduplications; and at the
bottom of the box a bill tucked and reduplicated in the same modern
proportions.

Miss Bree had now to go out, like any other machine girl, to the
warerooms; except when she took home particular hand-work of button
holes and trimmings, or occasionally engaged herself for two or
three days to some family mother who could not pay the big bills,
and who ran her own machine, cut her own basques and gores, and
hired help for basting and finishing. She had almost done with even
this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles,
sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about.
Poor "Aunt Blin" overheard one man ask his wife in her dressing-room
before dinner, "Why, if she must have a stitching-woman in the
house, she couldn't find a more comfortable one to look at; somebody
a little bright and cheerful to bring to the table, instead of that
old callariper?"

Miss Bree behaved like a saint; it was not the lady's fault; she
resisted the temptation to a sudden headache and declining her
dinner, for fear of hurting the feelings of her employer, who had
always been kind to her; she would not let her suspect or be afraid
that the speech had come to her ears; she smoothed her thin old
hair, took off her glasses, wiped her eyes a little, washed her
hands, and went down when she was called; but after that day she
"left off going out to work for families."

The warehouses did not pay her very well; neither there was she able
to compete with the smart young seamstresses; she only got a dollar
and a quarter a day, and had to lodge and feed herself; yet she kept
on; it was her lot and living; she looked out at her third-story
window upon the roofs and spires, listened to the fire alarms, heard
the chimes of a Sunday, saw carriages roll by and well-dressed
people moving to and fro, felt the thrill of the daily bustle, and
was, after all, a part of this great, beautiful Boston! Strange
though it seem, Miss Belinda Bree was content.

Content enough to tell charming stories of it, up in the country,
to her niece Bel, when she was questioned by her.

Of her room all to herself, so warm in winter, with a red carpet
(given her by the very Mrs. "Callariper" who could not help a
misgiving, after all, that Miss Bree's vocation had been ended with
that wretched word), and a coal stove, and a big, splendid brindled
gray cat--Bartholomew--lying before it; of her snug little
housekeeping, with kindlings in the closet drawer, and milk-jug out
on the stone window-sill; of the music-mistress who had the room
below, and who came up sometimes and sat an hour with her, and took
her cat when she came away, leaving in return, in her own absences,
her great English ivy with Miss Bree. Of the landlady who lived in
the basement, and asked them all down, now and then, to play a game
of cassino or double cribbage, and eat a Welsh rabbit: of things
outside that younger people did,--the girls at the warerooms and
their friends. Of Peck's cheap concerts, and the Public Library
books to read on holidays and Sundays; of ten-cent trips down the
harbor, to see the surf on Nantasket Beach; of the brilliant streets
and shops; of the Public Garden, the flowers and the pond, the boats
and the bridge; of the great bronze Washington reared up on his
horse against the evening sky; of the deep, quiet old avenues of the
Common; of the balloons and the fireworks on the "Fourth of Julies."

I do not think she did it to entice her; I do not think it occurred
to her that she was putting anything into Bel's head; but when Bel
all at once declared that she meant to go to Boston herself and seek
her fortune,--do machine-work or something,--Aunt Blin felt a sudden
thankful delight, and got a glimpse of a possible cheerfulness
coming to herself that she had never dreamed of. If it was pleasant
to tell over these scraps of her small, husbanded enjoyments to Bel,
what would it be to have her there, to share and make and enlarge
them? To bring young girls home sometimes for a chat, or even a cup
of tea; to fetch books from the library, and read them aloud of a
winter evening, while she stitched on by the gas-light with her
glasses on her little homely old nose? The little old nose radiated
the concentrated delight of the whole diminutive, withered face; the
intense gleam of the small, pale blue eyes that bent themselves
together to a short focus above it, and the eagerness of the thin,
shrunken lips that pursed themselves upward with an expression that
was keener than a smile. Bel laughed, and said she was "all puckered
up into one little admiration point!"

After that, it was of no use to be wise and to make objections.

"I'll take you right in with me, and look after you, if you do!"
said Miss Bree. "And two together, we can housekeep real
comfortable!"

It was as if a new wave of youth, from the far-retreated tide, had
swept back upon the beach sands of her life, to spend its sparkle
and its music upon the sad, dry level. Every little pebble of
circumstance took new color under its touch. Something belonging to
her was still young, strong, hopeful. Bel would be a brightness in
the whole old place. The middle-aged music-mistress would like
her,--perhaps even give her some fragmentary instruction in the
clippings of her time. Mrs. Pimminy, the landlady,--old Mr. Sparrow,
the watch-maker, who went up and down stairs to and from his nest
under the eaves,--the milliner in the second-floor-back,--why, she
would make friends with them all, like the sunshine! There would be
singing in the house! The middle-aged music-mistress did not
sing,--only played. And this would be her doing,--her bringing; it
would be the third-floor-front's glory! The pert girls at the
wareroom would not snub the old maid any more, and shove her into
the meanest corner. She had got a piece of girlhood of her own
again. Let them just see Bel Bree--that was all!

Yet she did set before Bel, conscientiously, the difference between
the free country home and the close, bricked up city.

"There isn't any out-doors there, you know--round the houses; _home_
out-doors; you have to be dressed up and go somewhere, when you go
out. The streets are splendid, and there's lots to look at; but
they're only made to _get through_, you know, after all."

They were sitting, while she spoke, on a flat stone out under the
old elm-trees between the "fore-yard" and the barn. Up above was
great blue depth into which you could look through the delicate
stems and flickering leaves of young far tips of branches. One
little white cloud was shining down upon them as it floated in the
sun. Away off swelled billowy tops of hills, one behind another,
making you feel how big the world was. That was what Bel had been
saying.

"You feel so as long as you stay here," replied Miss Blin, "as if
there was room and chance for everything 'over the hills and far
away.' But in the city it all crowds up together; it gets just as
close as it can, and everybody is after the same chances. 'Tain't
_all_ Fourth-of-July; you mustn't think it. Milk's ten cents a
quart, and _jest_ as blue! Don't you 'spose you're better off up
here, after all? Do you think Mrs. Bree could get along without you,
now?"

Bel replied most irrelevantly. She sat watching the fowls
scratching around the barn-door.

"How different a rooster scratches from a hen!" said she. "He just
gives one kick,--out smart,--and picks up what he's after; _she_
makes ever so many little scrabbles, and half the time concludes it
ain't there!--What was it you were saying? About mother? O, _she_
don't want me! The trouble is, Aunt Blin, we two _don't_ want each
other, and never did." She picked up a straw and bent it back and
forth, absently, into little bits, until it broke. Her lips curled
tremulously, and her bright eyes were sad.

Miss Blin knew it perfectly well without being told; but she
wouldn't have pretended that she did, for all the world.

"O, tut!" said she. "You get along well enough. You like one another
full as well as could be expected, only you ain't constituted
similar, that's all. She's great for turning off, and going
ahead, and she ain't got much patience. Such folks never has. You
can't be smart and easy going too. 'Tain't possible. She's
right-up-an'-a-comin', and she expects everybody else to be. But you
_like_ her, Bel; you know you do. You ain't goin' away for that. I
won't have it that you are."

"I like her--yes;" said Bel, slowly. "I know she's smart. I _mean_
to like her. I do it on purpose. But I don't _love_ her, with a
_can't help it_, you see. I feel as if I ought to; I want to have my
heart go out to her; but it keeps coming back again. I could be
happy with you, Aunt Blin, in your up-stairs room, with the blue
milk out in the window-sill. There'd be room, enough for _us_, but
this whole farm isn't comfortable for Ma and me!"

After that, Miss Blin only said that she would speak to Kellup;
meaning her brother, Caleb Bree.

Caleb Bree was just the sort of man that by divine compensation
generally marries, or gets married by a woman that is
"right-up-and-a-comin'." He "had no objections," to this plan of
Bel's, I mean; perhaps his favorite phrase would have expressed his
strongest feeling in the crisis just referred to, also; it was a
normal state of mind with him; he had gone through the world, thus
far, on the principle of _not_ "having objections." He had none now,
"if Ma'am hadn't, and Blin saw best." He let his child go out from
his house down into the great, unknown, struggling, hustling,
devouring city, without much thought or inquiry. It settled _that_
point in his family. "Bel had gone down to Boston to be a
dress-maker, 'long of her Aunt Blindy," was what he had to say to
his neighbors. It sounded natural and satisfactory. House-holds
break up after the children are grown, of course; they all settle to
something; that is all it comes to--the child-life out of which if
they had died and gone away, there would have been wailing and
heart-breaking; the loving and tending and watching through cunning
ways and helpless prettiness and small knowledge-getting: they turn
into men and women, and they go out into the towns, or they get
married, even--and nobody thinks, then, that the little children are
dead! But they are: they are dead, out of the household, and they
never come back to it any more.

Caleb Bree let Bel go, never once thinking that after this she never
_could_ come back the same.

Mrs. Bree had her own two children,--and there might be more--that
would claim all that could be done for them. She would miss Bel's
telling them stories, and washing their faces, and carrying them off
into the barn or the orchard, and leaving the house quiet of a
Sunday or a busy baking-day. It had been "all Bel was good for;"
and it had been more than Mrs. Bree had appreciated at the time. Bel
cried when she kissed them and bade them good-by; but she was gone;
she and her round leather trunk and her little bird in its cage that
she could not leave behind, though Aunt Blin did say that "she
wouldn't altogether answer for it with Bartholomew."

Bel herself,--the other little bird,--who had never tried her
wings, or been shut up in strange places with fierce, prowling
creatures,--she could answer for her, she thought!

It is worth telling,--the advent of Bel and her bird in the
up-stairs room in Leicester Place, and what came of it with
Bartholomew. Miss Blin believed very much in her cat with the
apostolic name, though she had never tried his principles with a
caged bird. She had tutored him to refrain from meat and milk unless
they were set down for him in his especial corner upon the hearth.
He took his airings on the window-ledge where the sun slanted in of
a morning, beside the very brown paper parcel in which was wrapped
the mutton chop for dinner; he never touched the cheese upon the
table, though he knew the word "cheese" as well as if he could spell
it, and would stand up tall on his hind paws to receive his morsel
when he was told, even in a whisper, and without a movement, that he
might come and have some. He preferred his milk condensed in this
way; he got very little of it in the fluid form, and did not think
very highly of it when he did. He knew what was good, Aunt Blin
said.

He understood conversation; especially moral lectures and
admonitions; Miss Bree had talked to him precisely as if he had a
soul, for five years. He knew when she was coming back at one
o'clock to dinner, or at nine in the evening, by the ringing of the
bells. After she had told him so, he would be sitting at the door,
watching for its opening, from the instant of their first sound
until she came up-stairs.

When Aunt Blin thought over all this and told it to Bel, on their
way down in the cars, she almost persuaded her niece and quite
convinced herself, that Bartholomew could be dealt with on
principles of honor and confidence. They would not attempt to keep
the cage out of his reach; that would be almost to keep it out of
their own. She would talk to Bartholomew. She would show him the
bird, and make him understand that they set great store by it, that
it must not be meddled with on any account. "Why, he never _offers_
to touch my tame pigeon that hops in on the table to eat the
crumbs!"

"But a pigeon is pretty big, Aunt Blin," Bel answered, "and may be
Bartholomew suspects that it is old and tough. I _am_ afraid about
my tiny, tender little bird."

Bel was charmed with Aunt Blin's room, when she opened the blinds
and drew up the colored shades, and let the street-light in until
she could find her matches and light the gas. It was just after dark
when they reached Leicester Place. The little lamp-lighter ran down
out of the court with his ladder as they turned in. There were two
bright lanterns whose flames flared in the wind; one just opposite
their windows, and one below at the livery stable. There was a big
livery stable at the bottom of the court, built right across the
end; and there was litter about the doors, and horse odor in the
air. But that is not the very worst kind of city smell that might
be, and putting up with that, the people who lived in Leicester
Court had great counterbalancing advantages. There was only one side
to the place; and though the street way was very narrow, the
opposite walls shut in the grounds of a public building, where there
were trees and grass, and above which there was really a chance at
the sky. Further along, at the corner, loomed the eight stories of
an apartment hotel. All up and down this great structure, and up and
down the little three-storied fronts of the Court as well, the whole
place was gay with illumination, for these last were nearly all
lodging houses, and at night at least, looked brilliant and grand;
certainly to Bel Bree's eyes, seeing three-storied houses and
gas-lights for the first time. Inside, at number eight, the one
little gas jet revealed presently just what Aunt Blin had told
about: the scarlet and black three-ply carpet in a really handsome
pattern of raised leaves; the round table in the middle with a red
cloth, and the square one in the corner with a brown linen one; the
little Parlor Beauty stove, with a boiler atop and an oven in the
side,--an oval braided mat before it, and a mantel shelf above with
some vases and books upon it,--all the books, some dozen in number,
that Aunt Blin had ever owned in the whole course of her life. One
of the blue vases had a piece broken out of its edge, but that was
turned round behind. The closets, one on each side of the
fire-place, answered for pantry, china closet, store-room, wardrobe,
and all. The _refrigerator_ was out on the stone window-sill on the
east side. The room had corner windows, the house standing at the
head of a little paved alley that ran down to Hero Street.

"There!" says Aunt Blin turning up the gas cheerily, and dropping
her shawl upon a chair. "Now I'll go and get Bartholomew, and then
I'll run for some muffins, and you can make a fire. You know where
all the things are, you know!"

That was the way she made Bel welcome; treating her at once as part
and parcel of everything.

Down stairs ran Aunt Blin; she came up more slowly, bringing the
great Bartholomew in her arms, and treading on her petticoats all
the way.

Straight up to the square table she walked, where Bel had set down
her bird-cage, with the newspaper pinned over it. Aunt Blin pulled
the paper off with one hand, holding Bartholomew fast under the
other arm. His big head stuck out before, and his big tail behind;
both eager, restless, wondering, in port and aspect.

"Now, Bartholomew," said Aunt Blin, in her calmest, most confident,
most deliberate tones, "see here! We've brought--home--a little
_bird_, Bartholomew!"

Bartholomew's big head was electric with feline expression; his ears
stood up, his eyes sent out green sparks; hair and whiskers were on
end; he devoured poor little Cheeps already with his gaze; his tail
grew huger, and vibrated in great sweeps.

"O see, Aunt Blin!" cried Bel. "He's just ready to spring. He don't
care a bit for what you say!"

Aunt Blin gave a fresh grip with her elbow against Bartholomew's
sides, and went on with unabated faith,--unhurried calmness.

"We set _everything_ by that little bird, Bartholomew! We wouldn't
have it touched for all the world! Don't--you--never--go--_near_ it!
Do you hear?"

Bartholomew heard. Miss Bree could not see his tail, fairly lashing
now, behind her back, nor the fierce eyes, glowing like green fire.
She stroked his head, and went on preaching.

"The little bird _sings_, Bartholomew! You can hear it, mornings,
while you eat your breakfast. And you shall have CHEESE for
breakfast as long as you're good, and _don't_--_touch_--the _bird_!"

"O, Aunt Blin! He will! He means to! Don't show it to him any more!
Let me hang it way up high, where he _can't_!"

"Don't you be afraid. He understands now, that we're precious of it.
Don't you, Bartholomew? I want him to get used to it."

And Aunt Blin actually set the cat down, and turned round to take up
her shawl again.

Bartholomew was quiet enough for a minute; he must have his
cat-pleasure of crouching and creeping; he must wait till nobody
looked. He knew very well what he was about. But the tail trembled
still; the green eyes were still wild and eager.

"The kindlings are in the left-hand closet, you know," said Aunt
Blin, with a big pin in her mouth, and settling her shoulders into
her shawl. "You'll want to get the fire going as quick as you can."

Poor Bel turned away with a fearful misgiving; not for that very
minute, exactly; she hardly supposed Bartholomew would go straight
from the sermon to sin; but for the resistance of evil enticements
hereafter, under Miss Bree's trustful system,--though he walked off
now like a deacon after a benediction,--she trembled in her poor
little heart, and was sorely afraid she could not ever come to love
Aunt Blin's great gray pet as she supposed she ought.

Aunt Blin had not fairly reached the passage-way, Bel had just
emerged from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed
the door to behind her with her foot, when--crash! bang!--what _had_
happened?

A Boston earthquake? The room was full of a great noise and
scramble. It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and
turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has
infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such
a crisis. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of
incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about
the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The
overturned cage,--the dragged-off table-cloth,--the clumsy
Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to
the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful
bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the
other side within, absolutely plane and prone with the mere smite of
terror.

"You awful wild beast! I _knew_ you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel,
snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped
discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be
reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic
indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however
much one may want to do it.

"You dreadful tiger cat!" she repeated. It almost seemed as
if her love for Aunt Blin let loose more desperately her
denunciations. There is something in human nature which turns
most passionately,--if it does turn,--upon one's very own.

"I can't bear you! I never shall! You're a horrid, monstrous,
abominable, great, gray--wolf! I knew you were!"

Miss Bree fairly gasped.

When she got breath, she said slowly, mournfully, "O Bartholomew! I
_thought_ I could have trusted you! _Was_ you a murderer in your
heart all the time? Go away! I've--no--_con_--fidence _in_ you! No
_co-on_--fidence _in_ you, Bartholomew Bree!"

It is impossible to write or print the words so as to suggest their
grieved abandonment of faith, their depth of loving condemnation.

If Bartholomew had been a human being! But he was not; he was only a
great gray cat. He retreated, shamefaced enough for the moment,
under the table. He knew he was scolded at; he was found out and
disappointed; but there was no heart-shame in him; he would do
exactly the same again. As to being trusted or not, what did he care
about that?

"I don't believe you do," said Aunt Blin, thinking it out to this
same point, as she watched his face of greed, mortified, but
persistent; not a bit changed to any real humility. Why do they say
"_dogged_," except for a noble holding fast? It is a cat which is
selfishly, stolidly obstinate.

"I don't know as I shall really like you any more," said Aunt Blin,
with a terrible mildness. "To think you would have ate that little
bird!"

Aunt Blin's ideal Bartholomew was no more. She might give the
creature cheese, but she could not give him "_con_fidence."

Bel and the bird illustrated something finer, higher, sweeter to her
now. Before, there had only been Bartholomew; he had had to stand
for everything; there was a good deal, to be sure, in that.

But Bel was so astonished at the sudden change,--it was so funny in
its meek manifestation,--that she forgot her wrath, and laughed
outright.

"Why, Auntie!" she cried. "Your beautiful Bartholomew, who
understood, and let alone!"

Aunt Blin shook her head.

"I don't know. I _thought_ so. But--I've no--_con_-fidence in him!
You'd better hang the cage up high. And I'll go out for the
muffins."

Bel heard her saying it over again, as she went down the stairs.

"No, I've no--_con_-fidence in him!"




CHAPTER VIII.

TO HELP: SOMEWHERE.


There was an administratrix's notice tacked up on the great elm-tree
by the Bank door, in Upper Dorbury Village.

All indebted to the estate of Joseph Ingraham were called upon to
make payment,--and all having demands against the same to present
accounts,--to Abigail S. Ingraham.

The bakery was shut up. The shop and house-blinds were closed upon
the street. The bright little garden at the back was gay with summer
color; roses, geraniums, balsams, candytuft; crimson and purple, and
white and scarlet flashed up everywhere. But Mrs. Ingraham had on a
plain muslin cap, instead of a ribboned one such as she was used to
wear; and Dot was in a black calico dress; they sat in the kitchen
window together, ripping up some breadths of faded cloth that they
were going to send to the dye-house. Ray was in the front room,
looking over papers. Mrs. Ingraham's name appeared in the notices,
but Ray really did the work, all except the signing of the necessary
documents.

Everything was very different here, the moment Joseph Ingraham's
breath was gone from his body. Everything that had stood in his name
stood now in the name of an "estate." Large or small, an estate has
always to be settled. There had been a man already applying to buy
out the remainder of the bakery lease,--house and all. He was ready
to take it for eight years, including the one it had yet to run in
the present occupancy; he would pay them a considerable bonus for
relinquishing this and the goodwill.

Ray had stood at the helm and brought the vessel to port; that was
different from undertaking another voyage. She did not see that she
had any right to hazard her mother's and sister's little means, and
incur further risks which she had not actual capital to meet, for
the ambition, or even possible gain, of carrying on a business. She
understood it perfectly; she could have done it; she could, perhaps,
have worked out some of her own new ideas; if she and Dot had been
brothers, instead of sisters, it would very likely have been what
they would have done. There was enough to pay all debts and leave
them upwards of a thousand dollars apiece. But Ray sat down and
thought it all over. She remembered that they _were_ women, and she
saw how that made all the difference.

"Suppose either of us should wish to marry? Dot might, at any rate."

That was the way she said it to herself. She really thought of Dot
especially and first; for it would be her doing if her sister were
bound and hampered in any way; and even though Dot were willing,
could she see clear to decide upon an undertaking that would involve
the seven best years of the child's life, in which "who knew what
might happen?"

She did not look straight in the face her own possibilities, yet she
said simply in her own mind, "A woman ought to leave room for that.
It might be cheating some one else, as well as herself, if she
didn't." And she saw very well that a woman could not marry and
assume family ties, with a seven years' lease of a bakehouse and a
seven years' business on her hands. "Why--he might be a--anything,"
was the odd little wording with which she mentally exclaimed at this
point of her considerations. And if he were anything,--anything of a
man, and doing anything in the world as a man does,--what would they
do with two businesses? The whole vexed question solved itself to
her mind in this home-fashion. "It isn't natural; there never will
be much of it in the world," she said. "Young women, with their real
womanhood in them, won't; and by the time they've lived on and found
out, the chances will be over. To do business as a man does, you
must choose as a man does,--for your whole life, at the beginning of
it."

Ray Ingraham, with all her capacity and courage, at this
turning-point where choice was given her, and duty no longer showed
her one inevitable way, chose deliberately to be a woman. She took
up a woman's lot, with all its uncertainty and disadvantage; the lot
of _working for others_.

"I can find something simply to do and to be paid for; that will be
safe and faithful; that will leave room."

She said something like that to Frank Sunderline, when he sat
talking with her over some building accounts one evening.

He had come in as a friend and had helped them in many little ways;
beside having especial occasion in this matter, as representing his
own employer who held a small demand against the estate.

"I am too young," she told him. "Dot is too young. I should feel as
if I _must_ have her with me if I kept on, and we should need to
keep all the little money together. How can I tell what Dot--how can
I tell what either of us"--she changed her word with brave honesty,
"might have a wish for, before seven years were over? If I were
forty years old, and could do it, I would; I would take girls for
journeymen,--girls who wanted work and pay; then they would be
brought up to a very good business for women, if they came to want
business and they would be free, while they _were_ girls, for
happier things that might happen."

"That is good Woman's Rights doctrine; it doesn't leave out the best
right of all."

"A woman can't shape out her life all beforehand, as a man can; she
can't be sure, you see; and nobody else could feel sure about her. I
suppose _that_ is what has kept women out of the real business
world,--the ordering and heading of things. But they can help. I'm
willing to help, somehow; and I guess the world will let me."

There was something that went straight to Frank Sunderline's
deepest, unspoken apprehension of most beautiful things, in Ray
Ingraham's aspect as she said these words. The man in him suddenly
perceived, though vaguely, something of what God meant when He made
the woman. Power shone through the beauty in her face; but power
ready to lay itself aside; ready to help, not lead. Made the most
tender, because most perfect outcome and blossom of humanity, woman
accepts her conditions, as God Himself accepts his own, when He
hides Himself away under limitations, that the secret force may lie
ready to the work man thinks he does upon the earth and with it. In
dumb, waiting nature, his own very Self bides subject; yes, and in
the things of the Spirit, He gives his Son in the likeness of a
servant. He lays _help_ upon him; He lays help for man upon the
woman. He took her nearest to Himself when He made her to be a help
meet in all things to his Adam-child. To "_help_" is to do the work
of the world.

Ray's face shone with the splendor of self-forgetting, when she said
that she would "help, somewhere."

What made him suddenly think of his own work? What made him say,
with a flash in his eyes,--

"I've got a job of my own, Ray, at last. Did you know it?"

"I'm _very_ glad," said Ray, earnestly. "What is it?"

"A house at Pomantic. Rather a shoddy kind of house,--flashy, I
mean, and ridiculously grand; but it's work; and somebody has to
build all sorts, you know. When I build _my_ house--well, never
mind! Holder has put this contract right into my hands to carry out.
He'll step over and look round, once in a while, but I'm to have the
care of it straight through,--stock, work, and all; and I'm to have
half the profits. Isn't that high of Holder? He has his hands full,
you know, at River Point. There's no end of building there, this
year a whole street going up--with Mansard roofs, of course.
Everything is going into this house that _can_ go into a house; and
to see that it gets in right will be--practice, anyhow."

Sunderline chattered on like a boy; almost like a girl, telling Ray
what he was so glad of. And Ray listened, her cheek glowing; she was
so glad to be told.

He had not said a word of this to Marion Kent that afternoon, when
she had stopped him at her window, going by. He had stood there a
few minutes, leaning against the white fence, and looking across the
little door-yard, to answer the questions she asked him; about the
Ingrahams, the questions were; but he did not offer to come nearer.

Marion was sewing on a rich silk dress, sea-green in color; it
glistened as she shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it
contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream
and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress,"
she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a
reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together,
and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go
to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places;
folks liked their amusements to come after them, from the cities;
they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do.

Marion was in high spirits. She felt as if she had the world before
her. She would travel, at any rate; whether there were anything else
left of it or not, she would have had that; that, and the sea-green
dress. While she talked, her mother was ironing in the back room.
The dress was owed for. She could not pay for it till she began to
get her own pay.

What was the use of telling a girl like that--all flushed with
beauty and vanity, and gay expectation--about his having a house to
build? What would it seem to her,--his busy life all spring and
summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting,
chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles
and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in
laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into
his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself
lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be
applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a
dream, and call it her profession? When Frank Sunderline knew there
was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain;
only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of
people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate
amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare?

It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done
before. She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her
glistening silk dress. He must leave her now, with the shimmer of
them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely,
lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very
face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all
enticing, outward complement and suggestion.

He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a
mistake.

Ray did not answer for a minute; she had a little struggle with
herself; a little fight with that in her heart which made itself
manifest to her in a single quick leap of its pulses.

Was she glad? Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this
poor side of her--making a mistake? Losing, perhaps, so much?

"Marion has something better in her than that," she made herself
say, when she replied. "Perhaps it will come out again, some day."

"I think she has. Perhaps it will. You have always been good and
generous to her, Ray."

What did he say that for? Why did he make it impossible for her to
let it go so?

"Don't!" she exclaimed. "I am not generous to her this minute! I
couldn't help, when you said it, being satisfied--that you should
see. I don't know whether it is mean or true in me, that I always do
want people to see the truth."

She covered it up with that last sentence. The first left by
itself, might have shown him more. It was certainly so; that there
was a little severity in Ray Ingraham, growing out of her clear
perception and her very honesty. When she could see a thing, it
seemed as if everybody ought to see it; if they did not, as if she
ought to show them, that they might fairly understand. A half
understanding made her restless, even though the other half were
less kind and comfortable.

"You show the truth of yourself, too," said Frank. "And that is
grand, at any rate."

"You need not praise me," said Ray, almost coldly. "It is impossible
to be _quite_ true, I think. The nearer you try to come to it, the
more you can't"--and then she stopped.

"How many changes there have been among us!" she began again,
suddenly, at quite a different point, "All through the village there
have been things happening, in this last year. Nobody is at all as
they were a year ago. And another year"--

"Will tell another year's story," said Frank Sunderline. "Don't you
like to think of that sometimes? That the story isn't done, ever?
That there is always more to tell, on and on? And that means more to
_do_. We are all making a piece of it. If we stayed right still, you
see,--why, the Lord might as well shut up the book!"

He was full of life, this young man, and full of the delight of
living. There was something in his calling that made him rejoice in
a confident strength. He was born to handle tools; hammer and chisel
were as parts of him. He builded; he believed in building; in
something coming of every stroke. Real work disposes and qualifies a
man to believe in a real destiny,--a real God. A carpenter can see
that nails are never driven for nothing. It is the sham work,
perhaps, of our day, that shakes faith in purpose and unity; a
scrambling, shifty living of men's own, that makes to their sight a
chance huddle and phantasm of creation.

Mrs. Ingraham came down into the room where they were, at this
moment, and Dot presently followed. They began to talk of their
plans. They were going, now, to live with the grandmother in Boston,
in Pilgrim Street.

It was a comfortable, plain old house, in a little strip of
neighborhood long since left of fashion, and not yet demanded of
business; so Mrs. Rhynde could afford to occupy it. She had used,
for many years, to let out a part of her rooms,--these that the
Ingrahams would take,--in a tenement, as people used to say, making
no ambitious distinctions; now, it might be spoken of as "a flat,"
or "apartments." Everything is "apartments" that is more than a
foothold.

The rooms were large, but low. At the back, they were sunny and
airy; they looked through, overlapping a court-way, into Providence
Square. It was a real old Boston homestead, of which so few remain.
There were corner beams and wainscots, some tiled chimney-pieces,
even. It made you think of the pre-Revolutionary days of
tea-drinkings, before the tea was thrown overboard. The step into
the front passage was a step down from the street.

Ray and Dot told these things; beguiled into reminiscences of
pleasant childish visiting days; Ray, of long domestication in still
later years. It would be a going home, after all.

Leicester Place was only a stone's throw from Pilgrim Street. From
old Mr. Sparrow's attic window, you could look across to the
Pilgrim Street roofs, and see women hanging out clothes there upon
the flat tops of one or two of the houses. But what of that, in a
great city? Will the Ingrahams ever come across Aunt Blin and bright
little Bel Bree?

In the book that binds up this story, there is but the turn of a
leaf between them. A great many of us may be as near as that to each
other in the telling of the world's story, who never get the leaf
turned over, or between whom the chapters are divided, with never a
connecting word.

The Ingrahams moved into Boston in the early summer. It was July
when Bel came down from the hill-country with Aunt Blin.




CHAPTER IX.

INHERITANCE.


Do you remember somebody else who lives in Boston? Have you heard of
the old house in Greenley Street, and Uncle Titus Oldways, and
Desire Ledwith, who came home with him after her mother and sisters
went off to Europe, and something had touched her young life that
had left for a while an ache after it? Do you know Rachel Froke, and
the little gray parlor, and the ferns, and the ivies, and the
canary,--and the old, dusty library, with its tall, crowded shelves,
and the square table in the midst, where Uncle Oldways sat? All is
there still, except Uncle Oldways. The very year that had been so
busy elsewhere, with its rushing minutes that clashed out events and
changes as moving atoms clash out heat--that had brought to pass all
that it has taken more than a hundred pages for me to tell,--that
had drawn toward one centre and focus, whither, as into a great
whirling maelstrom of life, so many human affairs and interests are
continually drifting, the far-apart persons that were to be the
persons of one little history,--this same year had lifted Uncle
Titus up. Out of his old age, out of his old house,--out from among
his books, where he thought and questioned and studied, into the
youth and vigor to which, underneath the years, he had been growing;
into the knowledges that lie behind and beyond all books and
Scriptures; into the house not made with hands, the Innermost, the
Divine. Not _away_; I do not believe that. Lifted up, in the life of
the spirit, if only taken within.

Outside,--just a little outside, for she loved him, and her life
had grown into his and into his home,--Desire remained, in this home
that he had given her.

People talked about her, eagerly, curiously. They said she was a
great heiress. Her mother and Mrs. Megilp had written letters to her
overflowing with a mixture of sentiment and congratulation,
condolence and delight. They wanted her to come abroad at once, now,
and join them. What was there, any longer, to prevent?

Desire wrote back to them that she did not think they understood.
There was no break, she said; there was to be no beginning again.
She had come into Uncle Titus's living with him; he had let her do
that, and he had made it so that she could stay. She was not going
to leave him now. She would as soon have robbed him of his money and
run away, while the handling of his money had been his own. It was
but mere handling that made the difference. _Himself_ was not
dependent on his breath. And it was himself that she was joined
with. "How can people turn their backs on people so?" She broke off
with that, in her old, odd, abrupt, blindly significant fashion.

No: they could not understand. "Desire was just queerer than ever,"
they said. "It was such a pity, at her age. What would she be if she
lived to be as old as Uncle Titus himself?" Mrs. Megilp sighed,
long-sufferingly.

Mrs. Froke lived on in the gray parlor; Hazel Ripwinkley ran in and
out; she hardly knew which was most home now, Greenley or Aspen
Street. She and Desire were together in everything; in the bakery
and laundry and industrial asylum that Luclarion Grapp's missionary
work was taking shape in; in Chapel classes and teachers meetings;
in a Wednesday evening Read-and-Talk, as they called it, that they
had gathered some dozen girls and young women into, for which the
dear old library was open weekly; in walks to and fro about the city
"on errands;" in long plans and consultations, now, since so much
power had been laid on their young heads and hands.

Uncle Oldways had made "the strangest will that ever was," if that
were not said almost daily of men's last disposals. Out of the two
sister's families, the Ripwinkleys and the Ledwiths, he had chosen
these two girls,--children almost,--whom he declared his "next of
kin, in a sense that the Lord and they would know;" and to them he
left, in not quite equal shares, the bulk of his large property; the
income of each portion to be severally theirs,--Desire's without
restriction, Hazel's under her mother's guardianship, until each
should come to the age of twenty-five years. If either of the two
should die before that age, her share should devolve upon the other;
if neither should survive it,--then followed a division among
persons and charities, such, as he said, with his best knowledge,
and the Lord's help, he felt himself at the moment of devising moved
to direct. At twenty-five he counseled each heir to make, promptly,
her own legal testament, searching, meanwhile, by the light given
her in the doing of her duty, for whom or whatsoever should be shown
her to be truly, and of the will of God--not man, her own "next of
kin."

"For needful human form," he said, in conclusion, "I name Frances
Ripwinkley executrix of this my will; but the Lord Himself shall be
executor, above and through all; may He give unto you a right
judgment in all things, and keep us evermore in his holy comfort!"

Some people even laughed at such a document as this, made as if the
Almighty really had to do with things, and were surer than trustees
and cunning law-conditions.

"Two girls!" they said, "who will marry--the Lord knows whom--and
do, the Lord knows what, with it all!"

That was exactly what Titus Oldways believed. He believed the Lord
_did_ know. He had shown him part; enough to go by to the end of
_his_ beat; the rest was his. "Everything escheats to the King, at
last."

And so Desire Ledwith and Hazel Ripwinkley sat in the old house
together, and made their pure, young, generous plans; so they went
in and out, and did their work, blessedly; and Uncle Titus's
arm-chair stood there, where it always had, at the library table;
and the Book of the Gospels, with its silver cross, lay in its
silken cover where it always lay; and nothing had gone but the bent
old form from which the strength had risen and the real presence
loosened itself; and Uncle Titus's grand, beautiful life passed over
to them continually; for hands on earth, he had their hands; for
feet, their feet. There was no break, as Desire had said; it was the
wonderful "fellowship of the mystery" which God meant, in the
manifold wisdom that they know in heavenly places, when He ordained
the passing over. We call it death; we _make_ it death; a
separation. We leave off there. We gather up the tools that loved
ones drop, and use them to carve out, selfishly, our own pleasures;
we let their _life_ go, as if it were no matter to keep it up upon
the earth. We turn our backs, and go our ways, and leave saints'
hands outstretched invisibly in vain.

It was ever so bright and cheerful in this house into which
death--that was such a birth--had come. These children were
brimming over with happy thankfulness that Uncle Titus had loved and
trusted them so. They never solemnized their looks or lengthened
their accent when they spoke of him; he had come a great deal nearer
to them in departing than he had ever known how to come, or they to
approach him, before. Something young in his nature that had been
hidden by gray hairs and slowness of years, sprang to join itself to
their youth on which he had laid his bequest of the Lord's work.
They ran lightly up and down where he had walked with measured
gravity; they chatted and laughed, for they knew he was gladder than
either; they sat in Desire's large, bright chamber at their work, or
they went down to find out things in books in the library; and here,
though nothing fell with any chill upon their spirits, they handled
reverently the volumes he had loved,--they used tenderly the
appliances that had been his daily convenience. With an unspoken
consent, they never sat in the seat that had been his. The young
heiresses of his place and trust made each a place for herself at
opposite ends of the large writing-table, and left his chair before
his desk as if he himself had just left it and might at any moment
come in and sit again there with them. They always kept a vase of
flowers beside the desk, at the left hand.

One day, that summer, they were up-stairs, sewing. Rachel Froke was
busy below; they could hear some light movement now and then, in the
stillness; or her voice came up through the open windows as she
spoke to Frendely, the dear old serving woman, helping her dust and
sort over glasses and jars for the yearly preserving.

I cannot tell you what an atmosphere of things and relations that
had grown and sweetened and mellowed there was about this old home;
what a lovely repose of stability, in the midst of the domestic
ferments that are all about us in the changing households of these
changing days. Frendely, who had served her maiden apprenticeship in
a country family of England, said it was like the real old places
there.

"Hazel," said Desire, suddenly,--(she did her _thinking_ deeply and
slowly, but she had never got over her old suddenness in speech; it
was like the way a good old seamstress I knew used to advise with
the needle,--"Take your stitch deliberate, but pull out your thread
as quick as you can,")--"Hazel! I think I may go to Europe after
all."

"Desire!"

"And more than that, Hazie, you are to go with me."

"Desire Ledwith!"

"Yes, those are my names. I haven't any more; so your surprise can't
expend itself any further in that direction. Now, listen. It's all
to be done in our Wednesday evening Read-and-Talks. See?"

"O!"

"Very well; begin on interjections; they'll last some time. What I
mean is, an idea that I got from Mrs. Hautayne, when I saw her last
spring at the Schermans'. She says she always travelled so much on
paper; and that paper travelling is very much like paper weddings;
you can get all sorts of splendid things into it. There are books,
and maps, and gazetteers, and pictures, and stereoscopes. Friends'
letters and art galleries. I took it right up into my mind,
silently, for my class, sometime. And pretty soon, I think we'll
go."

"O, Desire, how nice!"

"That's it! One new word, or two, every time, and repeat. 'Now say
the five?' as Fay's Geography used to tell us."

"O, Desire Ledwith, how nice!"

"Good girl. Now, don't you think that Mrs. Geoffrey and Miss
Kirkbright would lend us pictures and things?"

"How little we seem to have seen of the Geoffreys lately! I mean,
all this spring, even before they went down to Beverly," said Hazel,
flying off from the subject in hand at the mention of their names.
"I wonder why it is fixed so, Des', that the _best_ people--those
you want to get nearest to--are so busy _being_ the best that you
don't get much chance?"

"Perhaps the chance is laid up," said Desire, thoughtfully. "I think
a good many things are. But to keep on, Hazel, about my plan. You
know those two beautiful girls who came in Sunday before last, and
joined Miss Kirkbright's class? Not _beautiful_, I don't mean
exactly,--though one of them was that, too; but real"--

"Splendid!" filled out Hazel. "Real ready-made sort of girls. As if
they'd had chapel all their lives, somehow. Not like first-Sunday
girls at all."

"One of them _was_ a chapel girl. Miss Kirkbright told me. She grew
up there till she was sixteen years old; then she went to live in
the country. Now I must have those two in, you see. I don't know but
Mr. Vireo would say it was making a feast for friends and neighbors,
if I pick out the ready-made. But this sort of thing--you must have
some reliance, you know; then there's something for the rest to come
to, and grow to. I think I shall begin about it before vacation,
while they're all together and alive to things. It takes so long to
warm up to the same point after the break. We might have one
meeting, just to organize, and make it a settled thing. O, how good
it will be when Mr. Vireo comes home!"

If I had not so many things to tell before my story can be at all
complete, I should like nothing better than to linger here in Desire
Ledwith's room, where there was so really "a beautiful east window,
and the morning had come in." I should like to just stay in the
sunshine of it, and show what the stir of it was, and what it had
come to with these two; what a brightness, day by day, they lived
in. I should be glad to tell their piece of the story minutely; but
I should not be able to get at it to tell. We may touch such lives,
and feel the lovely pleasantness; but to enter in, and have the
whole--that may only be done in one way; by going and doing
likewise.

This talk of theirs gives one link; it shows you how easily and
naturally they came to have to do with the Ingrahams; how they
belonged in one sphere and drew to one centre; how simply things
happen, after all, when they have any business to happen.

Somebody speaks of the ascent of a lofty church spire, as giving
such a wonderful glimpse of the unity of a great city; showing its
converging movements, its net-work of connection,--its human
currents swayed and turned by intelligible drifts of purpose; all
which, when one is down among them, seem but whirls of a confusing
and distracting medley; a heaping and a rushing together of many
things and much conflicting action; where the wonder is that it
stays together at all, or that one part plays and fits in with any
other to harmony of service. If we could climb high enough, and see
deep enough, to read a spiritual panorama in like manner, we should
look into the mystery of the intent that builds the worlds and works
with "birth and death and infinite motion" to evolve the wonders of
all human and angelic history. We should only marvel, then, at what
we, with our little bit of wayward free will, hinder; not at what
God gently and mightily forecasts and brings to pass.

To find another link, we must go away and look in elsewhere.




CHAPTER X.

FILLMER AND BYLLES.


It was a hot morning in the heart of summer. The girls, coming in to
their work, after breakfasts of sour rolls, cheap, raw, bitter
coffee and blue milk, with a greasy relish, perhaps, of sausage,
bacon, fried potatoes, or whatever else was economical and
untouchable,--with the world itself frying in the fervid blaze of a
sun rampant for fifteen hours a day,--saw in the windows early
peaches, cool salads, and fresh berries; yellow and red bananas in
mellow, heavy clusters; morning bouquets lying daintily on wet
mosses; pale, beryl-green, transparent hothouse grapes hanging their
globes of sweet, refrigerant juices before toil-parched,
unsatisfied, feverish lips.

Let us hope that it did them good; it is all we can do now about it.

Up in the work-room of a great dress-making establishment were heaps
of delicate cambric, Victoria lawn, piqués, muslins, piles of
frillings, Hamburg edgings, insertions, bands. Machines were
tripping and buzzing; cutters were clipping at the tables; the
forewoman was moving about, directing here, hurrying there,
reproving now and then for some careless tension, rough fastening,
or clumsy seam. Out of it all were resulting lovely white suits;
delicate, cloud-like, flounced robes of bewitching tints; graceful
morning wrappers,--perfect toilets of all kinds for girls at
watering-places and in elegant summer homes.

Orders kept coming down from the mountains, up from the
sea-beaches, in from the country seats, where gay, friendly circles
were amusing away the time, and making themselves beautiful before
each others' eyes.

For it was fearfully hot again this year.

Bel Bree did not care. It all amused her. She had not got worn down
yet, and she did not live in a cheap, working-girls' boarding-house.
She had had radishes that morning with her bread and butter, and a
little of last year's fruit out of a tin can for supper the night
before. That was the way Miss Bree managed about peaches. I believe
that was the way she thought the petition in the Litany was
answered,--"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, that
in due time we may enjoy them;" after the luckier people have had
their fill, and begun on the new, and the cans are cheap. There are
ways of managing things, even with very little money. If you pay for
the _managing_, you have to do without the things. Bel and her aunt
together, with their united earnings and their nice, cosy ways, were
very far from being uncomfortable. Bel said she liked the
pinch,--what there was of it. She liked "a little bit brought home
in a paper and made much of."

Bel had been just a fortnight in the city. She had gone right to
work with her aunt at Fillmer & Bylles, she was bright and quick,
knew how to run a "Wilcox & Gibbs," and had "some perception," the
forewoman said, grimly; with a delicate implication that some others
had not. Miss Tonker's praises always pared off on one side what
they put on upon another.

It had taken Bel a fortnight to feel her ground, and to get exactly
the "lay of the land." Then she went to work, unhesitatingly, to set
some small things right.

This morning she had hurried herself and her aunt, come early, and
put Miss Bree down, resolutely, against all her disclaimers, in a
corner of the very best window in the room. To do this, she moved
Matilda Meane's sewing-machine a little.

When Matilda Meane came in, she looked as though she thought the
world was moved. She did not exactly dare to order Miss Bree up; but
she elbowed about, she pushed her machine this way and that; she
behaved like a hen hustled off her nest and not quite making up her
mind whether she would go back to it or not. Miss Bree's nose grew
apprehensive; it drew itself up with a little, visible, trembling
gasp,--her small eyes glanced timidly from under the drawn, puckered
lids, it was evidently all she could do to hold her ground. But Bel
had put her there, and loyalty to Bel kept her passive. It is so
much harder for some poor meek things ever to take anything, than it
is forever to go without. Only for love and gratefulness can they
ever be made to assume their common human rights.

Presently it had to come out.

Bel was singing away, as she gathered her work together in an
opposite quarter of the room, keeping a glance out at her right
eye-corner, expectantly.

"Who moved this machine?" asked Matilda Meane, stopping short in her
endeavors to make it take up the middle of the window without
absolutely rolling it over Aunt Blin's toes.

"I did, a little," answered Bel, promptly. "There was plenty of room
for two; and if there hadn't been, Aunt Blin must have a good light,
and have it over her left shoulder, at that. She's the oldest person
in the room, Miss Meane!"

"She was spoken to yesterday about her buttonholes," she added, in
a lower tone, to Eliza Mokey, as she settled herself in her own seat
next that young lady. "And it was all because she could hardly see."

"Buttonholes or not," answered Eliza, who preferred to be called
"Elise," "I'm glad somebody has taken Mat Meane down at last. She
needed it. I wish you could take her in hand everywhere. If _you_
boarded at our house"--

"I shouldn't," interrupted Bel, decisively. "Not under any
circumstances, from what you tell of it."

"That's all very well to say now; you're in clover, comparatively.
'Chaters' and real tea,--_and_ a three-ply carpet!"

Miss Mokey had gone home with Bel and Aunt Blin, one evening lately,
when there had been work to finish and they had made a "bee" of it.

"See if you could help yourself if you hadn't Aunt Blin."

"Why couldn't I help myself as well as she? She had a nice place all
alone, before I came."

"She must have half starved herself to keep it, then. Stands to
reason. Dollar and a quarter a day, and five dollars a week for your
room. Where's your muffins, and your Oolong? Or else, where's your
shoes?--Where's that Hamburg edging?"

"We don't have any Hamburg edging," said Bel, laughing.

"Nonsense. You know what I mean. O, here it is, under all that
piqué! For mercy's sake, won't Miss Tonker blow?--Now I get my nine
dollars a week, and out of it I pay six for my share of that
miserable sky-parlor, and my ends of the crusts and the
cheese-parings. No place to myself for a minute. Why, I feel mixed
up sometimes to that degree that I'd almost like to die, and begin
again, to find out who I am!"

"Well, I wouldn't live so. And Aunt Blin wouldn't. I'm afraid she
_didn't_ have other things quite so--corresponding--when she was by
herself; but she had the home comfort. And, truly, now, I shouldn't
wonder if there was real nourishment in just looking round,--at a
red carpet and things,--when you've got 'em all just to your own
mind. You can piece out with--peace!"

For two or three minutes, there was nothing heard after that in Bel
and Elise's corner, but the regular busy click of the machines, as
the tucks ran evenly through. Miss Tonker was hovering in the
neighborhood. But presently, as she moved off, and Elise had a spool
to change, Bel began again.

"Why don't you get up something different? Why couldn't a dozen, or
twenty, take a flat, or a whole house, and have a housekeeper, and
live nice? I believe I could contrive."

Bel was a born contriver. She was a born reformer, as all poets are;
only she did not know yet that she was either. That had been the
real trouble up in New Hampshire. She had her ideals, and she could
not carry them out; so she sat and dreamed of what she would do if
she could. If she might in any way have moulded her home to her own
more delicate instincts, it may be that her step-mother need not
have had to complain that "there was no spunk or snap to her about
anything." It was not in her to "whew round" among tubs and
whey,--to go slap-dash into soapmaking, or the coarse Monday's
washing, when all nicer cares were evaded or forbidden, when chairs
were shoved back against each other into corners, table-cloths left
crooked, and dragging and crumby, drawing the flies,--mantel
ornaments of uncouth odds and ends pushed all awry and one side
during a dusting, and left so,--carpets rough and untidy at the
corners; no touch of prettiness or pleasantness, nothing but clear,
necessary _work_ anywhere. She would have made home _home_; then she
would have worked for it.

Aunt Blin was like her. She would rather sit behind her blinds in
her neat, quiet room of a Sunday, too tired to go to church, but
with a kind of sacred rest about her, and a possible hushed thought
of a presence in a place that God had let her make that He might
abide with her in it,--than to live as these girls did,--even to
have been young like them; to have put on fine, gay things, bought
with the small surplus of her weekly earnings after the wretched
board was paid, and parade the streets, or sit in a pew, with a
Sunday-consciousness of gloves and new bonnet upon her.

"O, faugh!" said Elise Mokey, impatiently, to Bel's "I could
contrive." "I should like to see you, with girls like Matilda Meane.
You've got to _get_ your dozen or twenty, first, and make them
agree."

Miss Mokey had very likely never heard of Mrs. Glass, or of the
"catching your hare," which is the impracticable hitch at the start
of most delicious things that might otherwise be done.

"I think this world is a kind of single-threaded machine, after all.
There's always something either too tight or too loose the minute
you double," she said, changing her tension-screw as she spoke. "No;
we've just got to make it up with cracker-frolics, the best way we
can; and that takes one more of somebody's nine dollars, every time.
There's some fun in it, after all, especially to see Matilda Meane
come to the table. I do believe that girl would sell her soul if she
could have a Parker House dinner every day. When it's a little
worse, or a little better than usual, when the milk gives out, or we
have a yesterday's lobster for tea,--I wish you could just see her.
She's so mad, or she's so eager. She _will_ have claw-meat; it _is_
claw-meat with her, sure enough; and if anybody else gets it first,
or the dish goes round the other way and is all picked over,--she
_looks_! Why, she looks as if she desired the prayers of the
congregation, and nobody would pray!"

"What _are_ you two laughing at?" broke in Kate Sencerbox, leaning
over from her table beyond. "Bel Bree, where are your crimps?"

In the ardor of her work, or talk, or both, Bel's hair, as usual,
had got pushed recklessly aside.

"O, I only have a little smile in my hair early in the morning,"
replies quick, cheery Bel. "It never crimps decidedly, and it all
gets straightened out prim enough as the day's work comes on. It's
like the grass of the field, and a good many other things; in the
morning it is fresh and springeth up; in the evening it _giveth_ up,
and is down flat."

"I guess you'll find it so," said Elise Mokey, splenetically.

"Was _that_ what you were laughing at?" asked Kate. "Seems to me you
choose rather aggravating subjects."

"Aggravations are as good as anything to laugh at, if you only know
how," Bel Bree said.

"They're always handy, at any rate," said Elise.

"I thought 'aggravate' meant making worse than it is," said quiet
little Mary Pinfall.

"Just it, Molly!" answered Bel Bree, quick as a flash. "Take a
plague, make it out seven times as bad as it is, so that it's
perfectly ridiculous and impossible, and then laugh at it. Next time
you put your finger on it, as the Irishman said of the flea, it
isn't there."

"That's hommerpathy," said Miss Proddle. "Hommerpathy cures by
aggravating."

Miss Proddle was tiresome; she always said things that had been said
before, or that needed no saying. Miss Proddle was another of those
old girls who, like Miss Bree among the young ones, have outlived
and lost their Christian names, with their vivacity. Never mind; it
is the Christian name, and the Lord knows them by it, as He did
Martha and Mary.

"_Reductio ad absurdum_," put in Grace Toppings, who had been at a
High School, and studied geometry.

"Grace Toppings!" called out Kate Sencerbox, shortly, "you've
stitched that flounce together with a twist in it!"

Miss Tonker heard, and came round again.

"Gyurls!" she said, with elegantly severe authority, "I _will_ not
have this talking over the work. Miss Toppings, this whole skirt is
an unmitigated muddle. Head-tucks half an inch too near the bottom!
No _room_ for your flounce. If you can't keep to your measures,
you'd better not undertake piece-work. Take that last welt out, and
put it in over the top. And make no more blunders, if you please,
unless you want to be put to plain yard-stitching."

"Eight inches and a half is _some_ room for a flounce, I guess, if
it ain't nine inches," muttered the mathematical Grace, as she began
the slow ripping of the lock-stitched tucking, that would take half
an hour out of the value of her day.

"That's a comfort, ain't it?" whispered mischievous, sharp,
good-natured Kate. "Look here; I'll help, if you won't talk any more
Latin, or Hottentot."

It was of no use to tell those girls not to talk over their work.
The more work they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a
steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen,
who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength even in
listening, amidst the conflicting whirr of the feeds and
wheels,--and the old, sobered-down, slow ones, like Miss Bree and
Miss Proddle, button-holing and gather-sewing for dear life, with
their spectacles over their noses, and great bald places showing on
the tops of their bent heads,--kept time with silent thoughts to the
beat of their treadles and the clip of their needles against the
thimble-ends.

Elise Mokey stretched up her back slowly, and drew her shoulders
painfully out of their steady cramp.

"There! I went round without stopping! I put a sign on it, and I've
got my wish! I'd rather sweep a room, though, than do it again."

"You _might_ sweep a room, instead," said Emma Hollen, in her low,
faint tone, moved to speak by some echo in that inward rhythm of her
thinking. "I partly wish _I_ had, before now."

"O, you goose! Be a kitchen-wolloper!"

"May be I sha'n't be anything, very long. I should like to feel as
if I _could_ stir round."

"I wouldn't care if anybody could see what it came to, or what there
was left of it at the year's end," said Elise Mokey.

"I'd sweep a room fast enough if it was my own," said Kate
Sencerbox. "But you won't catch me sweeping up other folks' dust!"

"I wonder what other folks' dust really is, when you've sifted it,
and how you'd pick out your own," said Bel.

"I'd have my own _place_, at any rate," responded Kate, "and the
dust that got into it would go for mine, I suppose."

Bel Bree tucked away. Tucked away thoughts also, as she worked. Not
one of those girls who had been talking had anything like a home.
What was there for them at the year's end, after the wearing round
and round of daily toil, but the diminishing dream of a happier
living that might never come true? The fading away out of their
health and prettiness into "old things like Miss Proddle and Aunt
Blin,"--to take their turn then, in being snubbed and shoved aside?
Bel liked her own life here, so far; it was pleasanter than that
which she had left; but she began to see how hundreds of other girls
were going on in it without reward or hope; unfitting themselves,
many of them utterly, by the very mode of their careless, rootless
existence,--all of them, more or less, by the narrow specialty of
their monotonous drudgery,--for the bright, capable, adaptive
many-sidedness of a happy woman's living in the love and use and
beauty of home.

Some of her thoughts prompted the fashion in which she recurred to
the subject during the hour's dinner-time.

They were grouped together--the same half dozen--in a little
ante-room, with a very dusty window looking down into an alley-way,
or across it rather, since unless they really leaned out from their
fifth story, the line of vision could not strike the base of the
opposite buildings, a room used for the manifold purposes of
clothes-hanging, hand-washing, brush and broom stowing, and
luncheon eating.

"Girls! What would you do most for in this world? What would you
have for your choice, if you could get it?"

"Stories to read, and theatre tickets every night," said Grace
Toppings.

"Something decent to eat, as often as I was hungry," said Matilda
Meane, speaking thick through a big mouthful of cream-cake.

"To be married to Lord Mortimer, and go and live in an Abbey," said
Mary Pinfall, who sat on a box with a cracker in one hand, and the
third volume of her old novel in the other.

The girls shouted.

"That means you'd like a real good husband,--a Tom, or a Dick, or a
Harry," said Kate Sencerbox. "Lord Mortimers don't grow in this
country. We must take the kind that do. And so we will, every one of
us, when we can get 'em. Only I hope mine will keep a store of his
own, and have a house up in Chester Park!"

"If I can ever see the time that I can have dresses made for me,
instead of working my head and feet off making them for other
people, I don't care where my house is!" said Elise Mokey.

"Or your husband either, I suppose," said Kate, sharply.

"Wouldn't I just like to walk in here some day, and order old Tonker
round?" said Elise, disregarding. "I only hope she'll hold out till
I can! Won't I have a black silk suit as thick as a board, with
fifteen yards in the kilting? And a violet-gray, with a yard of
train and Yak-flounces!"

"That isn't _my_ sort," said Kate Sencerbox, emphatically. "It's
played out, for me. People talk about our being in the way of
temptation, always seeing what we can't have. It isn't _that_ would
ever tempt me; I'm sick of it. I know all the breadth-seams, and the
gores, and the gathers, and the travelling round and round with the
hems and trimmings and bindings and flouncings. If I could get _out_
of it, and never hear of it again, and be in a place of my own, with
my time to myself! Wouldn't I like to get up in the morning and
_choose_ what I would do?--when it wasn't Fast Day, nor Fourth of
July, nor Washington's Birthday, nor any day in particular? I think,
on the whole, I'd choose _not_ to get up. A chance to be lazy;
that's my vote, after all, Bel Bree!"

"O, dear!" cried Bel, despairingly. "Why don't some of you wish for
nice, cute little things?"

"Tell us what," said Kate. "I think we _have_ wished for all sorts,
amongst us."

"O, a real little _home_--to take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor
fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a
pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of
little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig
little kitchen; pies to make for Sundays and Thanksgivings; just
enough work to do in the mornings, and time in the afternoons to sit
and sew, and--somebody to read to you out loud in the evenings! I
think I'd do anything--that wasn't wicked--to come to live just like
that!"

"There isn't anybody that does live so nowadays," said Kate.
"There's nothing between horrid little stivey places, and a regular
scrub and squall and slop all the week round, and silk and snow and
ordering other folks about. You've got to be top or bottom; and if
it's all the same to you, I mean to be top if I can; even if"--

Kate was a great deal better than her pretences, after all. She did
not finish the bad sentence.

"I'll tell you what I do wonder at," said Bel Bree. "So many great,
beautiful homes in this city, and so few people to live in them. All
the rest crowded up, and crowded out. When I go round through Hero
Street, and Pilgrim Street, and past all the little crammy courts
and places, out into the big avenues where all the houses stand back
from each other with such a grand politeness, I want to say, Move up
a little, can't you? There's such small room for people in there,
behind!"

"Say it, why don't you? I'll tell you who'd listen. Washington,
sitting on his big bronze horse, pawing in the air at Commonwealth
Avenue!"

"Well--Washington _would_ listen, if he wasn't bronze. And its grand
for _everybody_ to look at him there. I shouldn't really want the
houses to move up, I suppose. It's good to have grandness somewhere,
or else nobody would have any place to stretch in. But there must be
some sort of moving up that could be, to make things evener, if we
only knew!"

Poor little Bel Bree, just dropped down out of New Hampshire! What a
problem the great city was already to her!

Miss Tonker put her sub-aristocratic face in at the door. It is a
curious kind of reflected majesty that these important functionaries
get, who take at first hand the magnificent orders, and sustain
temporary relations of silk-and-velvet intimacy with Spreadsplendid
Park.

The hour was up. Mary Pinfall slid her romance into the pocket of
her waterproof; Matilda Meane swallowed her last mouthful of the
four cream-cakes which she had valorously demolished without
assistance, and hastily washed her hands at the faucet; Kate and
Elise and Grace brushed by her with a sniff of generous contempt.

In two minutes, the wheels and feeds were buzzing and clicking
again. What did they say, and emphasize, and repeat, in the ears
that bent over them? Mechanical time-beats say something, always.
They force in and in upon the soul its own pulses of thought, or
memory, or purpose; of imagination or desire. They weld and
consolidate our moods, our elements. Twenty miles of musing to the
rhythmic throbbings of a railroad train, who does not know how it
can shape and deepen and confirm whatever one has started with in
mind or heart?




CHAPTER XI.

CRISTOFERO.


A September morning on the deck of a steamer bound into New York,
two days from her port.

A fair wind; waves gleaming as they tossed landward, with the white
crests and the grand swell that told of some mid-Atlantic storm,
which had given them their impulse days since, and would send them
breaking upon the American capes and beaches, in splendid tumult of
foam, and roar, and plunge; "white horses," wearing rainbows in
their manes.

The blue heaven full of sunshine; the air full of sea-tingle; a
morning to feel the throb and spring of the vessel under one's feet,
as an answer to the throb and spring of one's own life and
eagerness; the leap of strength in the veins, and the homeward haste
in the heart.

Two gentlemen, who had talked much together in the nine days of
their ship-companionship, stood together at the taffrail.

One was the Reverend Hilary Vireo, minister of Mavis Place Chapel,
Boston,--coming back to his work in glorious renewal from his eight
weeks' holiday in Europe. The other was Christopher Kirkbright,
younger partner of the house of Ferguson, Ramsay, and Kirkbright,
tea and silk merchants, Hong Kong. Christopher Kirkbright had gone
out to China from Glasgow, at the age of twenty-one, pledged to a
ten years' stay. For five years past, he had had a share in the
business for himself; for the two last, he had represented also the
interest of Grahame Kirkbright, his uncle, third partner; had
inherited, besides, half of his estate; the other half had come to
our friend at home, his sister, Miss Euphrasia.

"I had no right to stay out there any longer, making my tools;
multiplying them, without definite purpose. It was time to put them
to their use; and I have come home to find it. A man may take till
thirty-one to get ready, mayn't he, Mr. Vireo?"

"The man who took up the work of the world's salvation, began to be
about thirty years of age when he came forth to public ministry,"
returned Mr. Vireo.

"I never thought of that before. I wonder I never did. It has come
home to me, in many other parts of that Life, how full it is of
scarcely recognized analogy to prevailing human experience. That
'driving into the Wilderness!' What an inevitable interval it is
between the realizing of a special power and the finding out of its
special purpose! I am in the Wilderness,--or was,--Vireo; but I knew
my way lay through it. I have been pausing--thinking--striving to
know. The temptations may not have been wanting, altogether, either.
There are so many things one can do easily; considering one's self,
largely, in the plan. My whole life has waited, in some chief
respects, till the end of these ten pledged years. What was I to do
with it? Where was I to look for, and find most speedily, all that a
man begins to feel the desire to establish for himself at thirty
years old? Home, society, sphere; I can tell you it is a strange
feeling to take one's fortune in one's hand and come forth from such
a business exile, and choose where one will make the first
link,--decide the first condition, which may draw after all the
rest. Happily, I had my sister to come home to; and I had the
remembrance of the little story my mother told me--about my name. I
think she looked forward for the boy who could know so little then
of the destiny partly laid out for him already."

"About your name?" reminded Mr. Vireo. He always liked to hear the
whole of a thing; especially a thing that touched and influenced
spiritually.

"Yes. The story of Saint Cristofero. The strong man, Offero, who
would serve the strongest; who served a great king, till he learned
that the king feared Satan; who then sought Satan and served him,
till he found that Satan feared the Cross; who sought for Jesus,
then, that he might serve Him, and found a hermit who bade him fast
and pray. But he would not fast, since from his food came his
strength to serve with; nor pray, because it seemed to him idle; but
he went forth to help those who were in danger of being swept away,
as they struggled to cross the deep, wide River. He bore them
through upon his shoulders,--the weak, the little, the weary. At
last, he bore a little child who entreated him, and the child grew
heavy, and heavier, till, when they reached the other side, Offero
said,--'I feel as if I had borne the world upon my shoulders!' And
he was answered,--'Thou may'st say that; for thou hast borne Him who
made the world.' And then he knew that it was the Lord; and he was
called no more 'Offero,' but 'Cristofero.' My mother told me that
when I was a little child; and the story has grown in me. The Christ
has yet to be borne on men's shoulders."

Hilary Vireo stood and listened with gleaming eyes. Of course, he
knew the old saint-legend; of course, Christopher Kirkbright
supposed it; but these were men who understood without the saying,
that the verities are forever old and forever new. A mother's wise
and tender tale,--a child's life growing into a man's, and
sanctifying itself with a purpose,--these were the informing that
filled afresh every sentence of the story, and made its repetition a
most fair and sweet origination.

"And so,"--

"And so, I must earn my name," said Christopher Kirkbright, simply.

"Lift them up, and take them across," said Hilary Vireo, as if
thinking it over to himself. The old story had quickened him. A
grand perception came to him for his friend, who had begged him to
think for and advise him. "Lift them up and take them across!" he
repeated, looking into Mr. Kirkbright's face, and speaking the words
to him with warm energy. "They are waiting--so many of them! They
are sinking down--so many! They want to be lifted through. They
want--and they want terribly--a place of safety on the other side.
Go down into the river of temptation, and hardship, and sin, and
help them up out of it, Christopher. Take them up out of their cruel
conditions; make a place for some of them to begin over again in;
for some of them to rest in, once in a while, and take courage. Why
shouldn't there be cities of refuge, now, Kirkbright? Men are
mapping out towns for their own gain, all over the land, wherever a
water power or a railroad gives the chance for one to grow; why not
build a Hope for the hopeless? Nowhere on earth could that be done
as it could in our own land!"

"A City of Refuge'" Kirkbright repeated the words gravely,
earnestly; like those of some message of an angel of the Lord, that
sounded with self-attested authority in his ears.

After a pause, in which his thought followed out the word of
suggestion into a swift dream of possible fulfillment, he said to
his companion,--

"I believe there was nothing in that old Jewish economy, Vireo, that
was not given as a 'pattern of things' that should be. That whole
Old Testament is a type and prophecy of the kingdom coming. Only it
was but the first Adam. It was given right into the very conditions
that illustrated its need. It would have meant nothing, given into a
society of angels. Yet because men were not angels, but very mortal
and sinful men, we of to-day must fling contempt upon the Myth of
the Salvation of God! It will stand, for all that,--that history of
God's intimacy with men. It was _lived_, not told as a vision, that
it _might_ stand! It was lived, to show how near, in spite of sin,
God came, and stayed. The second coming shall be without sin unto
salvation."

"I'm not sure, Kirkbright, but you ought to be a minister."

"Not to stand in a pulpit. God helping me, I mean to be a minister.
Wouldn't a preacher be satisfied to have studied a week upon a
sermon, if he knew that on Sunday, preaching it, he had sent it,
live, into one living soul? Fifty-two souls a year, to reach and
save,--would not that be enough? Well, then, every day a man might
be giving the Lord's word out somewhere, in some fashion, I think.
He needn't wait for the Sundays. Everybody has a congregation in the
course of the week. I don't doubt the week-day service is often you
preachers' best."

"I _know_ it is," Hilary Vireo replied.

"Come down into the cabin with me," said Mr. Kirkbright. "I want to
look up that old pattern. It will tell me something."

Down in the cabin they seated themselves together where they had
had many a talk before, at a corner table near Mr. Kirkbright's
state-room door. Out of the state-room he had brought his Bible.

He got hold of one word in that old ordination,--"unawares."

"'He that doeth it _unawares_," he repeated, holding the Bible with
his finger between the half-shut leaves, at that thirty-fifth
chapter of Numbers. "How that reminds of, and connects with, the
Atoning Prayer,--'Forgive them, for they know not what they do!'
'Sins, negligences, ignorances;' how they shade and change into each
other! If all the mistakes could be forgiven and set right, how much
evil, virulent and unmixed, would there be left in the world, do you
suppose?"

"Not more than there was before the mistakes began," replied Vireo.
"Like the Arabian genie, the monster would be drawn down from its
horrible expansion to a point again,--the point of a possibility;
the serpent suggestion of evil choice. When God has done his work of
forgiving, there is where it will be, I think; and the Son of the
woman shall set his heel upon its head."

"I wish I could see what lies behind this," said Mr. Kirkbright.
"'He shall abide in it unto the death of the high-priest,' and after
that, 'the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.'
That might almost seem to point to the old sacrificial idea; the
atonement by death. I cannot rest in that. I wish I could see its
whole meaning,--for meaning it must have, and a meaning of _life_."

"A temporary ministry; a limited exile; the one the measure of the
other," sail Hilary Vireo, slowly thinking it out, and taking the
book from the hand of his friend, to look over the words themselves,
as he did so.

"The glory is in the promise: 'he shall return into the land of his
possession.' His life shall be given back to him,--all that it was
meant to be. It shall be kept open for him, till the time of his
banishment is over. Meanwhile, over even this period is a holy
providing, an anointed commission of grace."

"But hear this," he continued, turning to the Epistle to the
Hebrews, "and put the suggestions alongside. All but God's final and
eternal _best_ is transitional. 'They truly were many priests,
because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But
this man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable
priesthood. Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost,
that come to God by Him.' Did it ever occur to you to think about
that saving to the uttermost? Not a scrap of blessed possibility
forfeited, lost? All gathered up, restored, put into our hands
again, from the redeeming hands of Christ? Backward and forward,
through all that was irretrievable to us; sought, and traced, and
found, and brought back with rejoicing; the whole house swept, until
not one silver piece is missing. That is the return into the land of
our possession. _That_ is God's salvation, and his gospel! That is
what shall come to pass. Not yet; not while we are only under the
lesser ministry; but when that priesthood over the time of our
waiting ends, and we have believed unto the full appearing of the
Lord!"

The speaker's face flushed and glowed; Hilary Vireo, always glad and
strong in look and bearing, was grandly joyful when the power of the
gospel he had to preach came upon him; the gospel of a full,
perfect, and unstinted hope.

"Is that what you tell your simple people?" asked Christopher
Kirkbright, fixing deeply eager eyes upon him.

"Yes; just that. In simplest words, changed and repeated often. It
is the whole burden of my message. What other message is there, to
men's souls? 'Repent, and receive the remission of your sins!' Build
your city of refuge, Mr. Kirkbright, and show them a beginning of
the fulfillment."

Whist and euchre tables not far off were breaking up, just before
lunch, with laughter and raised voices. Ladies were coming down from
the deck. In the stir, Mr. Vireo rose and went away. Christopher
Kirkbright carried his Bible back into his state-room, and shut the
door.




CHAPTER XII.

LETTERS AND LINKS.


That same September morning, Miss Euphrasia, sitting in her pretty
corner room at Mrs. Georgeson's,--just returned to her city life
from the rest and sweetness of a country summer,--had letters
brought to her door.

The first was in a thin, strong, blue envelope, with London and
Liverpool postmarks, and "per Steamer Calabria," written up in the
corner, business-wise, with the date, and a dash underneath. This
she opened first, for the English postmarks, associated with that
handwriting, gave her a sudden thrill of bewildered surprise:--

      "MY DEAR SISTER,--Within a very few days after this
      will reach you, I hope myself to land in America, and to see
      if, after all these years, you and I can do something about a
      home together. We learn one good of long separations, by what
      we get of them in this world. We can't help beginning again,
      if not actually where we left off, at least with the thought
      we left off at, 'live and fresh in our hearts. The thought, I
      mean, as regards each other; we have both got some thoughts
      uppermost by this time, doubtless, that we had not lived to
      then. At any rate, I have, who had ten years ago only the
      notions and dreams of twenty-one. I come straight to you with
      them, just as I went from you, dear elder sister, with your
      love and blessing upon me, into the great, working world.

      "Send a line to meet me in New York at Frazer and
      Doubleday's, and let me know your exact whereabouts. I found
      Sherrett here, and had a run to Manchester with him to see
      Amy. That's the sort of thing I can't believe when I do see
      it,--Mary's baby married and housekeeping! I'm glad you are my
      elder, Effie; I shall not see much difference in you.
      Thirty-one and forty-three will only have come nearer
      together. And you are sure to be what only such fresh-souled
      women as you _can_ be at forty-three."

With this little touch of loving compliment the letter ended.

Miss Euphrasia got up and walked over to her toilet-glass. Do you
think, with all her outgoing goodness, she had not enough in her
for this, of that sweet woman-feeling that desires a true
beauty-blossoming for each good season of life as it comes? A pure,
gentle showing, in face and voice and movement, of all that is
lovely for a woman to show, and that she tells one of God's own
words by showing, if only it be true, and not a putting on of
falseness?

If Miss Euphrasia had not cared what she would seem like in the eyes
as well as to the heart of this brother coming home, there would
have been something wanting to her of genuine womanhood. Yet she had
gone daily about her Lord's business, thinking of that first; not
stopping to watch the graying or thinning of hairs, or the gathering
of life-lines about eyes and mouth, or studying how to replace or
smooth or disguise anything. She let her life write itself; she only
made all fair, according to the sense of true grace that was in her;
fair as she could with that which remained. She had neither
neglected, nor feverishly contrived and worried; and so at forty
three she was just what Christopher, with his Scotch second-sight,
beheld her; what she beheld herself now as she went to look at her
face in the glass, and to guess what he would think of it.

She saw a picture like this:--

Soft, large eyes, with no world-harass in them; little curves
imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as
lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never
learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest
harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of
consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented
play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of sunshine, to
soften and brighten continually. Her hair had been golden-brown;
there was plenty of it still; it had kept so much of the gold that
it was now like a tender mist through which the light flashes and
smiles. Of all color-changes, this is the rarest.

Miss Euphrasia smiled at her own look. "It is the home-face, I
guess; Christie will know it." Smiling, she showed white edges of
perfect teeth.

"What a silly old thing I am!" she said, softly; and she blushed up
and looked prettier yet.

"Why, I _will_ not be such a fool!" she exclaimed, then, really
indignant; and sat down to read her second letter, which she had
half forgotten:--

                        "BRICKFIELD FARMS, (near Tillington), Maine.

      "DEAR MISS EUPHRASIA,--I have not written to you
      since we left Conway, because there seemed so little really to
      trouble you with; but your kind letter coming the other day
      made me feel as if I must have a talk with you, and perhaps
      tell you something which I did not fully tell you before. We
      left our address with Mr. Dill, although except you, I hardly
      know of anybody from whom a letter would be likely to come.
      Isn't it strange, how easily one may slip aside and drop out
      of everything? We heard of this place from some people who bad
      been to Sebago Lake and Pleasant Mountain, and up from there
      across the country to Gorham, and so round to Conway through
      the Glen.

      "Mother was not well at Conway; indeed, dear Miss Euphrasia,
      she is more ill, perhaps, than I dare to think. She is very
      weak; I dread another move, and the winter is so near! May be
      the pleasant October weather will build her up; at any rate,
      we must stay here until she is much better. We have found such
      good, kind, plain people! I will tell you presently how nice
      it is for us, and the plans I have been able to make for the
      present. It has been a very expensive summer; we have moved
      about so much; and in all the places where we have been
      before, the board has been so high. At Lebanon and Sharon it
      was dreadful; I really had to worry mother to get away; and
      then Stowe was not much better, and at Jefferson the air was
      too bracing. At Crawford's it was lovely, but the bill was
      fearful! So we drifted down, till we finished August in
      Conway, and heard of this. I wish we had known of it at the
      beginning; but then I suppose it would not have suited mother
      for all summer.

      "I had a great worry at Sharon, Miss Euphrasia, and it has
      grown worse since. I can't help being afraid mother has been
      dreadfully cheated. We got acquainted with some people there;
      a Mr. and Mrs. Farron Saftleigh, rich Westerners, who made a
      good deal of show of everything; money, and talk, and conjugal
      devotion, and friendship. Mrs. Saftleigh came a great deal to
      mother's room, and gave her all the little chat of the
      place,--I'm afraid I don't amuse mother myself as much as I
      ought, but some things do seem so tiresome to tell over, when
      you've seen more than enough of them yourself,--and she used
      to take her out to drive nearly every day.

      "Well, it seemed that Mr. Saftleigh had gone out West only six
      years ago, and had made all his money since, in land and
      railroad business. Mrs. Saftleigh said that 'whatever Farron
      touched was sure to double.' She _meant_ money; but I thought
      of our perplexities when she said it, and he certainly has
      managed to double _them_. He went to New York two or three
      times while we were at the Springs; he was transacting
      railroad business; getting stock taken up in the new piece of
      road laid out from Latterend to Donnowhair; and he was at the
      head of a company that had bought up all the land along the
      route. 'Sure to sell at enormous profits any time after the
      railroad was opened.' Poor mother got so feverish about it!
      She didn't see why our little money shouldn't be doubled as
      well as other people's. And then she cried so about being left
      a widow, with nobody out in the world to get a share of
      anything for her; and Mrs. Saftleigh used to tell her that
      such work was just what friends were made for, and it was so
      providential that she had met her here just now; and she was
      always calling her 'sweet Mrs. Argenter.'

      "Nobody could help it; mother worried herself sick, when I
      begged her to wait till we could come home and consult some
      friend we knew. 'The chance would be lost forever,' she said;
      'and who could be kinder than the Saftleighs, or could know
      half so much? Mr. Farron Saftleigh risked his own money in
      it.' And at last, she wrote home and had her Dorbury mortgage
      sold, and paid eight thousand dollars of it to Mr. Saftleigh,
      for shares in the railroad, and land in Donnowhair. And, dear
      Miss Euphrasia, that is all we've got now, except just a few
      hundred dollars on deposit in the Continental, and the other
      four thousand of the mortgage, that mother put into
      Manufacturers' Insurance stock, to pacify me. If the land
      _doesn't_ sell out there in six months, as Mr. Saftleigh says
      it will, I don't know where any more income for us is to come
      from.

      "I am saving all I can here, for the winter _must_ cost. You
      would laugh if you knew how I am saving! I am helping Mrs.
      Jeffords do her work, and she doesn't charge me any board, and
      so I lay up the money without letting mother know it. I don't
      feel as if that were quite right,--or comfortable, at least;
      but after all, why shouldn't she be cheated a little bit the
      other way, if it is possible? That is why I hope we shall be
      here all through October.

      "We are having lovely weather now; not a sign of frost.
      Although this place is so far north, it is sheltered by great
      hills, and seems to lie under the lee, both ways, of high
      mountain ranges, so that the cold does not really set in very
      early. It is a curious place. I wish I had left room to tell
      you more about it. There is a great level basin, around which
      slope the uplands, rising farther and farther on every side
      except the south, until you get among the real mountain
      regions. On these slopes are the farms; the Jeffords', and the
      Applebees', and the Patchons', and the Stilphins'. Aren't they
      quaint, comfortable old country names? I think they only have
      such names among farmers. The name of the place,--or rather
      neighborhood, for I don't know where the _place_ actually
      is--there are three places, and they are all four or five
      miles off--Mill Village, and Pemunk, and Sandon; the name of
      the neighborhood,--Brickfield Farms, comes from there having
      been brickmaking done here at one time; but it was given up.
      The man who owned it got in debt, and failed, I believe; and
      nobody has taken hold of it again, because it is so far from
      lines of transportation; but there are some cottages about the
      foot of Cone Hill, where the laborers used to live; and a big
      queer, old red brick house, that looks as if it were walking
      up stairs,--built on flat, natural steps of the rock, and so
      climbing up, room behind room, with steps inside to
      correspond. I have liked so much to go through it, and imagine
      stories about it, though all the story there is, is that of
      Mr. Flavius Josephus Browne, the man of the brick enterprise,
      who built it in this odd way, and probably imagined a story
      for himself that he never lived out in it, because his money
      and his business came to an end. How strange it is that work
      doesn't always make money, and that it takes so much
      combination to make anything worth while! I wonder that even
      men know just what to do. And as for women,--why, when they
      take to elbowing men out, what will it all come to?

      "I have written on, until I have written off some of my heavy
      feelings that I began with. If I could only _talk_ to you,
      dear Miss Euphrasia, I think they would all go. But I will not
      trouble you any longer now; I am quite ashamed of the great
      packet this will make when it is folded up. But you told me to
      let you know all about myself, and I can't help minding such
      an injunction as that!

              "Yours gratefully and affectionately always,
                                         "SYLVIE ARGENTER."

Miss Kirkbright had not read this straight through without a pause.
Two or three times she had let her hands drop to her lap with the
letter in them, and sat thinking. When she came to what Sylvie said
about her "laughing to know how she had been saving," Miss Euphrasia
stopped, not to laugh, but to wipe tears from her eyes.

"The poor, dear, brave little soul!" she said to herself. "And that
blessed Mrs. Jeffords,--to let her think she is earning her board
with ironing sheets, perhaps, and washing dishes! Km!"

That last unspellable sound was a half choke and half chuckle, that
Miss Euphrasia surprised herself in making out of the sudden, mixed
impulse to sob, and laugh, and to catch somebody in her arms and
kiss that wasn't there.

"If I were an angel, I suppose I _could_ wait," she went on saying
to herself after that. "But even for them, it must be hard work some
times. And so,--how the great Reasons Why flash upon one out of
one's own little experience!--of that wonderful, blessed Day, when
all shall be made right, the angels in heaven know not, neither the
Son, but the Father only! The Lord cannot even trust the pure human
that is in Himself to dwell, separately, upon that End which is to
be, but may not be yet!"

I do not suppose anything whatever could come into Miss Euphrasia's
life, or touch her with its circumstance, that she did not
straightway read in it the wider truth beyond the letter. She was a
Swedenborgian, not after Swedenborg, but by the living gift itself.
Her insight was no separate thing, taken up and used now and then,
of a purpose. It was as different from that as eyes are from
spectacles. She could not help her little sermons. They preached
themselves to her and in her, continually. So, if we go along with
her, we must take her with her interpretations. Some friend said of
her once, that she was a life with marginal notes; and the notes
were the larger part of it.

But Miss Euphrasia found a postscript, presently, to Sylvie's
letter, written hurriedly on the other side of the last leaf; as if
she had made haste, before she should lose courage and change her
mind about saying it:--

"Do you think it would be possible to find any sort of place in
Boston where I could do something to help pay, this winter,--and
will you try for me? I could sew, or do little things about a house,
or read or write for somebody. I could help in a nursery, or teach,
some hours in a day,--hours when mother likes to be quiet; and she
would not know."

This was essential. "Mother must not know."

The finding of this postscript drove out of Miss Euphrasia's mind
another thought that had suddenly come into it as she turned the
letter over in her fingers. It was some minutes before she went back
to it; minutes in which she was quite absorbed with simple
suggestions and peradventures in Sylvie's behalf.

But--"Brickfield Farms? Sandon? Josephus Browne." When had she heard
those names before? What hopeless piece of property was it she had
heard her brother-in-law speak of long ago,--somewhere down
East,--where there were old kilns and clay-pits? Something that had
come into or passed through his hands for a debt?

"There is a great tangling of links here. What are they shaken into
my fingers for, I wonder? What is there here to be tied, or to be
unraveled?"

For she believed firmly, always, that things did not happen in a
jumble, however jumbled they might seem. Though she could scarcely
keep two thoughts together of the many crowded ones that had come to
her, one upon another, this strange morning, she was sure the Lord
knew all about it, and that He had not sent them upon her in any
real confusion. She knew that there was no precipitance--no
inconsequence--with Him.

"They are threads picked out for some work that He will do," she
said, as she tucked her brother's letter into a low, broad basket
beside the white and rose and violet wools with which she was at odd
minutes crocheting a dainty footspread for an invalid friend, and
put the other in her pocket.

"Now I will tie my bonnet on, and go, as I had meant, to see Desire.
That, also, is a piece of this same morning."

Miss Kirkbright, likewise, watched and learned a story that told and
repeated itself as it went along, of a House that was building bit
by bit, and of life that lay about it. Only hers was the house the
Lord builds; and the stories of it, and all the sentences of the
story, were the things He daily puts together.




CHAPTER XIII.

RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE.


Desire was out. She had gone down to Neighbor Street, to see
Luclarion Grapp.

Luclarion had a Home there now; a place where girls and women came
and went, and always found a rest and a welcome, to stay a night, or
a week, or as long as they needed, provided only, that they entered
into the work and spirit of the house while they did stay.

Luclarion still sold her good, cheap white loaves and brown, her
muffins and her crumpets; and she had what she called her "big
baking room," where a dozen women could work at the troughs and the
kneaders and the ovens; and in this bakery they learned an honest
trade that would stand them in stead for self-support, whether to
furnish a commodity for sale, or in homes where daily bread must be
put together as well as prayed for.

"You can do something now that all the world wants done; that's as
good as a gold mine, and ever so much better," said Luclarion Grapp.

Then she had a laundry. From letting her lodgers wash and iron for
themselves, to put their scanty wardrobes into the best condition
and repair, she went on to showing them nice work and taking it in
for them to do; until now there were some dozen families who sent
her weakly washing, three to five dollars' worth each; and for ten
months in the year a hundred and eighty dollars were her average
receipts.

Down at "The Neighbors,"--as from the name of the street and the
spirit and growth of the thing it had come to be called,--they had
"Evenings;" when friends of the place came in and made it pleasant;
brought books and pictures, flowers and fruit, and made a little
treat of it for mind and heart and body. It was some plan for one of
these that had taken Desire and Hazel to Miss Grapp's to-day.

Miss Euphrasia's first feeling was disappointment. It seemed as if
her morning were going a wee wrong after all. But her second
thought--that it was surely all in the day's work, and had happened
so by no mistake--took her in, with a cheery and really expectant
face, to Rachel Froke's gray parlor, to "sit her down a five
minutes, and rest." She confidently looked for her business then to
be declared to her, since the business she thought she had come upon
was set aside.

"I have had a great mind to come to thee," were the first words
Rachel said, as her visitor seated herself in the low chair, twin to
her own, which she kept for friends. Rachel Froke liked her own; but
she never felt any special comfort comfortably her own, until she
could hold it thus duplicated.

"I have wanted for a little while past to talk to some one, and
Hapsie Craydocke would not do. Everything she knows shines so
quickly out of those small kind eyes of hers. Hapsie would have
looked at me in an unspeakable way, and told it all out too soon. I
have a secret, Euphrasia, and it troubleth me; yet not very much for
myself; and I know it need not trouble me for anything. I have a
reason that may make me leave this place,--for a time at least; and
I am sorry for Desire, for she will miss me. Frendely can do all
that I do, and she hath the same wish for everything at heart; but
then who would help Frendely? She could not get on alone for thee
knows the house is large, and Desire is always very busy, with work
that should not be hindered. Can thee think of any way? I cannot
bear that any uncertain, trustless person should come in here. There
hath never been a common servant in this house. Doesn't thee think
the Lord hath some one ready since He makes my place empty? And how
shall we go rightly to find out?"

"Tell me first, Rachel, of your own matter. Is it any trouble,--any
grief or pain?"

Rachel had quite forgot. The real trouble of it was this perplexity
that she had told. The rest of it--that she knew was all right. She
would not call it trouble--that which she simply had to wait and
bear; but that in which she had to do, and knew not just how to "go
rightly about,"--it was that she felt as the disquiet.

She smiled, and laid her hand upon her breast.

"The doctor calls it trouble--trouble here. But it may be helped;
and there is a man in Philadelphia who treats such ailments with
great skill. My cousin-in-law, Lydia Froke, will receive me at her
house for this winter, if I will come and try what he can do. Thee
sees: I suppose I ought to go."

"And Desire knows nothing?"

"How could I tell the child, until I saw my way? Now, can thee
think?"

Rachel Froke repeated her simple question with an earnestness as if
nothing were between them at this moment but the one thing to care
for and provide. She waited for no word of personal pity or sympathy
to come first. She had grown quite used to this fact that she had
faced for herself, and scarcely remembered that it must be a pain to
Miss Kirkbright for her sake to hear it.

It was hard even for Miss Kirkbright to feel it at once as a fact,
looking in the fair, placid, smiling face that spoke of neither
complaint nor pain nor fear; though a thrill had gone through her at
the first word and gesture which conveyed the terrible perception,
and had made her pale and grave.

"Must it be a servant to do mere servant's work; or could some nice
young person, under Frendely's direction, relieve her of the actual
care that you have taken, and keep things in the kitchen as they
are?"

"That is precisely the best thing, if we could be sure," said
Rachel.

"Then I think perhaps I came here with an errand straight to you,
though I had no knowledge of it in coming," said Miss Kirkbright.

"That looks like the Lord's leading," said Rachel Froke. "There is
always some sign to believe by."

Miss Euphrasia took out Sylvie's letter, as the best way of telling
the story, and put it into Rachel Froke's hand. She did not feel it
any breach of confidence to do so. Breach of confidence is letting
strange air in upon a tender matter. The self-same atmosphere, the
self-same temperature,--these do not harm or change anything. It is
only widening graciously that which the confidence came for, to let
it touch a heart tuned to the celestial key, ready with the same
response of understanding. There are friends one can trust with
one's self so; sure that only by true and inward channels the word,
the thought, shall pass. Gossip--betrayal--sends from hand to hand,
from mouth to mouth; tosses about our sacredness, or the
misinterpreted sign of it, on the careless surface. From heart to
heart it may be given without disloyalty. That is the way God
Himself works round for us.

"It is very clear to me," said Rachel Froke, folding up the sheets
of the letter, and putting them back into their envelope. "Shall
Desire read this?"

"I think so. It would not be a real thing, unless she understood."

So Desire had the letter to read that day when she came home; and
then Rachel Froke told her how it was that she must go away for a
while; and Desire went round to Miss Euphrasia's room in the
twilight, and gave her back her letter, and talked it all over with
her; and they two next day explained the most of it to Hazel. It was
not needful that she should know the very whole about Rachel or the
Argenters; only enough was said to make plain the real companionship
that was coming, and the mutual help that it might be; enough of the
story to make Hazel cry out joyfully,--"Why, Desire! Miss
Kirkbright! She's another! She belongs!" And then, without such
drawback of sadness as the other two had had to feel, she caught
them each by a hand, and danced them up and down a little dance
before the fire upon the hearth-rug--singing,--

          "Four of us know the Muffin-man,
           Five of us know the Muffin-man,
           All of us know the Muffin-man,
             That lives in Drury Lane."




CHAPTER XIV.

MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL.


It was on the corner of Merle Street and Mavis Place. The Reverend
Hilary Vireo, as I have told you, was the minister.

It might have been called, if anybody had thought of it, "The Chapel
of the New Song." For it was the very gospel of hope and gladness
that Hilary Vireo preached there, and had preached and lived for
twenty years, making lives to sing that would have moaned.

"Haven't you a song in your heart, somewhere?" was his word once, to
a man of hard life, who came to him in a trouble, and telling him of
it, passed to a spiritual confidence, such as Vireo drew out of
people without the asking. At the end of his story, the man had said
that "he supposed it was as good as he ought to expect; he hadn't
any business to look for better, and he must just bear it, for
_this_ life. He hoped there _was_ something afterwards for them that
could get to it, but he didn't know."

"Aren't you _glad_ of things, sometimes?" said Mr. Vireo. "Of a
pleasant day, even,--or a strong, fresh feeling in the morning?
Don't you touch the edge of the great gladness that is in the world,
now and then, in spite of your own little single worries? Well,
_that's_ what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He
_never_ means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're
all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune.
What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings
truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch.
Don't mind the strain; believe in the _note_, every time his finger
touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day,
that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for."

The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in
his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by
day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began
from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though
they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began
to be according to the life.

"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of
what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then
forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a
hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him;
or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his
well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally
more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the
middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find
out. If ever we _do_ get it,--complete"--

"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo.

Among the crowd that waited about the open chapel doors, and through
the porches, and upon the stair-ways, one clear, sunny, October
morning, on which the congregation would not gather quietly to its
pews, stood this man, and many another man, and woman, and little
child, to whom a word from Hilary Vireo was a word right out of
heaven.

They would all have a first sight of him to-day,--his first Sunday
among them after the whole summer's absence in Europe. He might
easily not get into his pulpit at all, but give his gift in crumbs,
all the way along from the street curb-stones to the aisles in the
church above,--they waylaid him so to snatch at it from hand, face,
voice, as he should come in. It would not be altogether unlike
Hilary Vireo, if seeing things this way, he stopped right there
amongst them, to deal out heart-cheer and sympathy right and left,
face to face, and hand to hand,--the Gospel appointed for that day.

"What a crowd there'll be in heaven about some people!" said a tall,
good-looking man to Hilary Vireo, in an undertone, as he came up the
sidewalk with him into the edge of these waiting groups.

"May be. There'll be some scattering, I fancy, that we don't look
for. We shall find _all_ our centres there," returned Mr. Vireo,
hastily, as his people closed about him and the hand-shaking began.

Christopher Kirkbright made his way to the stairs, as the passage on
one side became cleared by the drifting of the parish over to the
western door, by which the minister was entering. A little way up he
found his sister, sitting with a young woman in the deep window
ledge at the turn, whence they could look quietly down and watch the
scene. Overhead, the heavy bell swung out slow, intermitted peals,
that thrilled down through all the timbers of the building, and
forth upon the crisp autumn air.

"My brother--Miss Ledwith," said Miss Euphrasia, introducing them.

Desire Ledwith looked up, The intensity that was in her gray eyes
turned full into Christopher Kirkbright's own. It was like the
sudden shifting of a lens through which sun-rays were pouring. She
had been so absorbed with watching and thinking, that her face had
grown keen and earnest without her knowing, as it had been always
wont to do; only it was different from the old way in this,--that
while the other had been eager, asking, unsatisfied, this was simply
deep, intent; a searching outward, that was answered and fed
simultaneously from within and behind; it was the _transmitted_
light by which the face of Moses shone, standing between the Lord
and the people.

She was not beautiful now, any more than she had been as a very
young girl, when we first knew her; in feature, that is, and with
mere outward grace; but her earnestness had so shaped for itself,
with its continual, unthwarted flow, a natural and harmonious outlet
in brow and eyes; in every curve by which the face conforms itself
to that which genuinely animates it, that hers was now a countenance
truly radiant of life, hope, purpose. The small, thin, clear cut
nose,--the lip corners dropped with untutored simplicity into a rest
and decision that were better than sparkle and smile,--the coolness,
the strength, that lay in the very tint and tone of her
complexion,--these were all details of character that had asserted
itself. It had changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and
narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened
their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer
curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of
the cheeks, making an artistic harmony with them.

It was not a face, so much as a living soul, that turned itself
toward Miss Euphrasia's brother, as Miss Kirkbright spoke his name
and Desire's.

For some reason, he found himself walking into the church beside
them afterward, thinking oddly of the etymology of that
word,--"introduced."

"Brought within; behind the barriers; made really known. Effie gave
me a glimpse of that girl,--her _self_. I don't think I was ever so
really introduced before."

He did not know at all who Miss Ledwith was; she might have been one
of the chapel protégées; from Hanover or Neighbor Street, or where
not; they all looked nice, in their Sunday dress; those who were
helped to dress were made to look as nice as anybody.

Desire Ledwith had on a dark maroon-colored serge, made very simply;
bordered, I believe, with just a little roll binding of velvet
around the upper skirt. Any shop-girl might have worn that; any
shop-girl would perhaps have been scarcely satisfied to wear the
plain black hat, with just one curly tip of ostrich feather tucked
in where the velvet band was folded together around it.

Desire sat with her class; it was her family, she said; her
church-family, at any rate; she had chosen her scholars from those
who had no parents to come with, and sit by; they were all glad of
their home-place weekly, at her side.

Miss Kirkbright and her brother went into the minister's pew. Miss
Kirkbright did not usually come to the service; the school, in which
she taught, met in the afternoon; but this was Mr. Vireo's first
Sunday, and his friend, her brother Christopher, had just come home
with him across the Atlantic.

There was singing, in which nearly every voice joined; there was
praying, in which one voice spoke as to a Presence felt close
beside; and all the people felt at least that _he_ felt it, and that
therefore it must be there. They believed in it through him, as we
all believe in it through Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father.
That they might some time come where he stood now, and know as he
knew, many of them were simply, carefully, daily striving to "do the
Will."

He spoke to them of "journeyings;" of how God was everywhere in the
whole earth; of how Abraham had the Lord with him, as he travelled
up through a land he knew not, as he dwelt in Padan Aram, as he
crossed the desert and came down through the hill-country into
Canaan. Of how the Lord met Jacob at Bethel, when he was on his way
through strange places, to go and serve his uncle Laban; how he went
with Joseph into Egypt, and afterwards led out the children of
Israel through forty years of wandering, showing them signs, and
comforting them all the way; how "He leadeth me" is still the
believer's song, still the heart-meaning of every human life.

"Whether we go or stay, as to place, we all move on; from our
Mondays to our Saturdays; from one experience to another; and before
us and beside us, passes always and abides near that presence
of _the Lord_. Do you know what 'the Lord' means? It is the
bread-giver; the feeder; the provider of every little thing. That is
the name of God when He comes close to humanity. In the beginning,
_God_ created the heavens and the earth; but _the Lord_ spoke unto
Adam; _the Lord_ appeared unto Abraham; _the Lord_ was the God of
Israel.

"God is _our_ Lord; our daily leader; our bread-giver, from meal to
meal, from mouthful to mouthful. The Angel of his Presence saves us
continually. And in these latter days, the 'Lord' is 'Christ;' the
human love of Him come down into our souls, to take away our
sins,--to give us bread from heaven to eat; to fulfill in the inward
kingdom every type and sign of the old leading; through need and
toil, through strange places, through tedious waitings, through the
long wilderness, and over the river into the Land that is beautiful
and very far off."

The four walked away from the church together; they stopped on the
corner of Borden Street. Here Desire and Mr. Vireo would leave
them,--their way lying down the hill.

"I liked your doctrine of the Lord," said Miss Euphrasia to the
minister. "That is true New Church interpretation, as I receive it."

"How can any one help seeing it? It shines so through the whole,"
said Desire.

"Leader and Giver; it is the one revelation of Scripture, from
beginning to end," said Mr. Vireo. "'Come forth into the land that I
shall show thee.' 'Follow Me, and I will give unto you everlasting
life.' The same call in the Old Testament and in the New."

"'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia.

"Leading--_by the hand_; giving--_morsel by morsel_," said Mr.
Kirkbright, emphasizing the near and dear detail.

"That makes me think," said Miss Euphrasia, suddenly. "Desire," she
went on, without explaining why, "we are going up to Brickfield
Farms next week, Christopher and I. Why shouldn't you go too,--and
bring her home, you know?"

As true as she lived, Miss Euphrasia hadn't a thought--whatever
_you_ may think--of this and that, or anything, when she said it.

Except the simple fact, that it was beautiful October weather, and
that _she_ should like it, and that Sylvie and Desire would get
acquainted.

"It will do you good. You'd better," said Mr. Vireo, kindly.

Christopher Kirkbright said nothing, of course. There was nothing
for him to say. He did not think very much. He only had a passing
feeling that it would be pleasant to see this grave-faced girl
again, and to understand her, perhaps, a little.




CHAPTER XV.

BONNY BOWLS.


The great show house at Pomantic was almost finished. The
architect's and builder's cares were over. There was a stained glass
window to go in upon the high second landing of the splendid carved
oak staircase, through which gold and rose and purple light should
pour down upon the panels of the soft-tinted walls and the rich
inlaying of the floors. There was a little polishing of walnut work
and oiling of dark pine in kitchen and laundry, and the fastening on
of a few silver knobs and faucets here and there, up-stairs,
remaining to be done; then it would be ready for the upholsterer.

Mr. Newrich had builded better than he thought; thanks to the
delicate taste and the genius of his architect, and the careful
skill of his contractor. He was proud of his elegant mansion, and
fancied that it expressed himself, and the glory that his life had
grown to.

Frank Sunderline knew that it expressed _him_-self; for he had put
himself--his hope, his ambition, his sense of right and
fitness--into every stroke and line. Now that it was done, it was
more his than the man's who paid the bills,--"out of his waistcoat
pocket," as he exultingly said to his wife. The designer and the
builder had paid for it out of brain and heart and will, and were
the real men who had got a new creation and possession of their own,
though they should turn their backs upon their finished labor, and
never go within the walls again.

It was a kind of a Sunday feeling with which Frank Sunderline was
glad, though it was the middle of the week. The sense of
accomplishment is the Sunday feeling. It is the very feeling in
which God Himself rested; and out of his own joy, bade all his sons
rest likewise in their turn, every time that they should end a six
days' toil.

Frank Sunderline had been in Boston all the afternoon, making up
accounts and papers with his employer. He came round to Pilgrim
Street to tea.

He had got into a way of coming in to tell the Ingrahams the story
of his work as it went on, at the same time that he continued his
friendly relation with their own affairs, as always ready to do any
little turn for them in which a man could be of service. This Sunday
rest of his,--though a busier day had not gone over his head since
the week began,--must be shared and crowned by them.

There is no subtler test of an unspoken--perhaps an
unexamined--relation of a man with his women friends, than this
instinctive turning with his Sabbath content and rest to the
companionship he feels himself most moved to when it is in his
heart. All custom, however homely, grows out of some reality, more
than out of any mere convenience; this is why the Sunday coming of
the country lover means so much more than his common comings, and
sets an established seal upon them all.

Walking down Roulstone Street, the lowering afternoon sun full in
his face across the open squares, Frank Sunderline thought how
pleasant it would be to have Ray Ingraham go out to Pomantic such an
afternoon as this, and see what he had done; just now, while it was
still his work, warm from his hand, and before it was shut away from
her and him by the Newrich carpets and curtains and china and
servants going in and fastening the doors upon them.

He would make a treat of it,--a holiday,--if she would go; he would
come and take her with a horse and buggy. He would not ask her to go
with him in the cars and be stared at.

He had never thought of asking her to go to ride, or of showing her
any set "attention" before. Frank Sunderline was not one of the
young fellows who begin, and begin in a hurry, at that end.

He walked faster, as it came into his head at that moment; something
of the same perception that would come to her,--if she cared for
this asking of his,--came to him with the sudden suggestion that it
was the next, the natural thing to do; that their friendship had
grown so far as that. The story comes to a man with some such
beautiful, scarce-anticipated steps of revelation as it does to a
woman, when he takes his life in the true, whole, patient order, and
does not go about to make some pretty sham of living before he has
done any real living at all.

Yes; he would ask her to ride out to Pomantic with him to-morrow;
and he thought she would go.

He liked her looks, to-night; he looked at her with this plan in his
thoughts, and it lighted her up; he was conscious of his own notice
of her, and of what it had grown to in him, insensibly, knowing her
so well and long. He analyzed, or tried to analyze, his rest and
pleasure in her; the reason why all she did and wore and said had
such a sweet and winning fitness to him. What was it that made her
look so different from other girls, and yet so nice?

"I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;" he said to her, when
tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and
setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table. "You don't snarl
yourselves up. I can't bear a tangle of things."

Ray colored.

"You mean skirts, I suppose," she said, laughing "We can't afford
two apiece, at a time. So we have taken to aprons."

It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to
custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look. They wore plain
black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their
pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with
broad, hemmed bows. They were of cross-barred muslin, for every
day,--cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon
serious occasions. This was their house wear; in the street they
contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if
anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank
Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a
"snarl."

"There's one thing certin," put in Mrs. Ingraham. "Women can't be
dolls and live women too. I don't ever want anything on that'll
hender me from goin' right into whatever there is to be gone into.
It's cloe's that makes all the diffikelty nowadays. Young women
can't do housework because of their cloe's; 'tisn't because they
ain't as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn't try
to wear a load and move one too. Folks that live a little nicer than
common, and keep girls, don't have more than five hours to their
day; the rest of the time, they're dressed up; and that means _tied_
up. They can't _see_ to their girls; they grow helplesser all the
time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and
upstrupperousness, and changes; and there's an up-stairs and a
down-stairs to every house, and no _home_ anywhere. That's how it
is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows
and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it.
Why, the help has to get into _their_ humpty-dumpties by three or
four o'clock, and see _their_ company. If there's sickness or
anything, that they can't, they're up a tree and off. I've known of
folks breakin' up and goin' to board, because they were _afraid_ of
sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was
gruel to make and waitin' up and down to do. There ain't much left
to depend on but hotels and hospitals. _Home_ is too big a worry.
And I do believe, my soul, its cloe's that's at the bottom of it.
It's been growin' wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler
biasses came in, and that's five and twenty years ago."

Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,--as the Scotch grow
more Scotch,--with warming up to the subject.

Sunderline laughed.

"Well, I must go," he said; "though you do look so bright and cosy
here. Half past seven's the last train, and there's a little job at
home I promised mother I'd do to-night. I've been so busy lately
that I haven't had any hammer and nails of my own. Ray!"

He had come round behind her chair, where she had seated herself at
her sewing.

"It's pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my
house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you
ride out with me to Pomantic?"

Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and
her reply. She felt her mother's eyes just lifted at her, without
another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt
Dot's utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single
quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers'
ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or
three stitches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She
felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs.
Ingraham's plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was
afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not,
perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him
ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have
him blamed; for what business had she, after all,--

"Well, Ray?"

She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder;
she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that
"Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour
afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it
seem like "anything."

"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank
you, Frank."

Frank Sunderline was not sure, as he walked up Roulstone Street
afterward, whether Ray cared much. She made it seem all matter of
course, in a minute, with that calm, deliberate answer of hers. And
she sat so still, and let him go out of the room with hardly another
word or look. She never stopped sewing, either.

Well,--he did not see those ten stitches! He might not have been the
wiser if he had. They were not carpenter-work.

But Ray knew better than to pick them out, while her mother and Dot
were by.

That next day was made for them.

Days are made for separate people, though they shine or storm over
so many. Or the people are drifted into the right days; what is the
difference?

I must stop for the thought here, that has to do with this question
of rain and shine,--with need, and asking, and giving.

Prayers and special providences! Are these thrust out of the scheme,
because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness of administration in
God's laws? "No use to pray for rain, or the calming of the storm,
or a blessing on the medicine?" When it was all set going, was not
the _prayer_ provided for? It was answered a million of years
beforehand, in the heart of God, who put it into your heart and
nature to pray. Long before the want or the sin, the beseeching for
help or for forgiveness was anticipated; provision was made for the
undoing or the counteracting of the evil,--the healing of the
wrong,--just as it should be longed for in the needing and repenting
soul. The more law you have, the more all things come under its
foresight.

So, under the dear Law,--which is Love, and cares for the
sparrow,--came the fair October day, with its unflecked firmament,
its golden, conquering warmth, its richness of scent and color; and
they two went forth in it.

They went early, after dinner; so that the brightness might last
them home again; and because the Newriches, in their afternoon
drive, might be coming out from the city, perhaps, a little later,
to look at their waistcoat-pocket plaything.

Mrs. Ingraham turned away from the basement window with a long
breath, as they drove off.

"Well, I suppose _that's_ settled," she said, with the
mother-sadness, in the midst of the not wishing it by any means to
be otherwise, inflecting her voice.

"I don't believe Ray thinks so," said Dot.

In some of the hundred little indirect ways that girls find the use
of, Ray had managed to really impose this impression upon the sturdy
mind of Dot, without discussion. If Dot had had the least bit of
experience of her own, as yet, she would not have been imposed upon.
But Mrs. Ingraham had great reliance on Dorothy's common sense, and
she left no lee-way for uninitiation.

"Do you really mean to say, child," she asked, turning round
sharply, "that Ray don't suppose,--or don't want,--or don't
intend--? She's a goose if she don't, then; and they're both geese;
and I shouldn't have any patience with 'em! And that's _my_ mind
about it!"

It is not such a very beautiful drive straight out to Pomantic over
the Roxeter road. There are more attractive ones in many directions.
But no drive out of Boston is destitute of beauty; and even the long
turnpike stretches--they are turnpike stretches still, though the
Pike is turned into an Avenue, and built all along with blocks of
little houses, exactly alike, in those places where used to be the
flat, unoccupied intervals between the scattered suburban
residences--have their breaks of hill and orchard and garden, and
their glimpses across the marshes, of the sea.

Ray enjoyed every bit of it,--even the rows of new tenements with
their wooden door-steps, and their disproportionate Mansard roofs
that make them all look like the picture in "Mother Goose," of the
boy under a big hat that might be slid down over him and just cover
him up.

The rhyme itself came into Ray's head, and she said it to her
companion.

          "Little lad, little lad, where were you born?
           Far off in Lancashire, under a thorn,
           Where they sup buttermilk from a ram's horn;
           And a pumpkin scooped, with a yellow rim,
           Is the bonny bowl they breakfast in."

"Those houses make me think of that," she said; "and the picture
over it--do you remember?"

Everybody remembers "Mother Goose." You can't quote or remind amiss
from her.

"To be sure," Frank answered, laughing. "And the histories and the
lives there carry out the idea. They all came from Lancashire, or
somewhere across the big sea, and they were all born under the
thorn, pretty much,--of poverty and pinches. But they sup their
buttermilk, and the bowl is bonny, if it is only a pumpkin rind.
Isn't that rhyme just the perfection of the glorifying of common
things by imagination?"

"It always seems to me that living _might_ be pretty in such places.
All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick
and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries
about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side
by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice
neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible
pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down
at Fort Warren, that you see so white and pretty among the trees, as
you go by in the steamboat."

"Only they don't make it out," said Frank Sunderline, "after all.
The prettiest part of it is the going by in the steamboat. Here, I
mean. The 'Mother Goose' idea is very suggestive; but if you went
through that block, from beginning to end, I wonder how many 'bonny
bowls' you would really find, that you'd be willing to breakfast out
of?"

"I wonder how many bonny bowls there'll be, one of these days, in
the cook's closet of the grand house we're going to?" said Ray.

"That's it," said Sunderline. "It's pretty to build, and it's pretty
to look at; but I should like to hear what your mother would say to
the 'conveniences.' One convenience wants another to take care of
it, till there's such a compound interest of them that it takes a
regiment just to man the pumps and pipes, and open and shut the
cupboards. Living doesn't really need so much machinery. But every
household seems to want a little universe of its own, nowadays."

"I suppose they make it wrong side out," said Ray. "I mean all
outside."

Further on, along the bay shores, and across the long bridge, and
reaching over crests of hills that gave beautiful pictures of land
and waterscape, the way was pleasanter and pleasanter. Other and
different homesteads were set along the route, suggesting endless
imaginations of the different character and living of the dwellers.
More than once, either Ray or Frank was on the point of saying, as
they passed some modest, pretty structure, with its field and
garden-piece, its piazza, porch, or balcony, and its sunny
windows,--"There! _that_ is a nice place and way to live!"

But a young man and woman are shy of sharing such imaginations,
before the sharing is quite understood and openly promised. So, many
times a silence fell upon their casual talk, when the same thing was
in the thought of each.

For miles before they came to it, the sightly Newrich edifice gave
itself, in different aspects, to the view. Mr. Newrich, himself,
never saw anything else in his drives out, of sky, or hill, or
water, after the first glimpse of "my house," and the way it "showed
up" in the approach.

Men were busy wheeling away rubbish, as they drove in between the
great stone posts that marked the entrance, where the elegant,
light-wrought, gilded iron gates were not yet hung.

Other laborers were rolling the lawn and terraces, newly sown with
English grass seed that was to come up in the spring, and begin to
weave its green velvet carpet. Piles of bricks and boards were
gathered at the back of the house and about the stables.

The plate-glass windows glittered in the sun. The tiled-roofs, with
their towers and slopes, looked like those in pictures of palace
buildings. It was a group,--a pile; under these roofs a family of
five--Americans, republicans, with no law of primogeniture to
conserve the estate beyond a single lifetime--were to live like a
little royal household. And the father had made all his money in
fifteen years in Opal Street. This country of ours, and the ways of
it, are certainly pretty nearly the queerest under the sun, when one
looks it all through and thinks it all over.

Frank Sunderline pointed out the lovely work of the pillars in the
porched veranda; every pillar a triple column, of the slenderest
grace, capitaled with separate devices of leaf and flower.

Then they went into the wide, high hall, and through the lower
rooms, floored and ceiled and walled most richly; and up over the
stately staircase, copied from some grand old English architecture;
along the galleries into the wings, where were the sleeping and
dressing-rooms; up-stairs, again, into other sleeping-rooms,--places
for the many servants that there must be,--pressrooms, closets,
trunk-rooms,--space for stowing all the ample providings for use and
change from season to season. Every frame and wainscot and panel a
study of color and exact workmanship and perfect finish.

It was a "show house;" that was just what it was. "And I can't
imagine the least bit of home-iness in the whole of it," said Ray,
coming down from the high cupola whence they had looked far out to
sea, and over inland, upon blue hills and distant woods.

They stopped half way,--on the wide second landing where they had
seen, as they went up, that the great window space was open; the
boards that had temporarily covered it having been removed, and the
costly panes and sashes that were to fill it resting against the
wall at one side.

"That is the greatest piece of nonsense in the whole house,"
Sunderline had said. "A crack in that would be the spoiling of a
thousand dollars."

"How very silly," said Ray, quietly. "It is only fit for a church or
a chapel."

"It shuts out the stables," said Sunderline. "Take care of that open
frame," he had added, cautioning her.

Now, coming down, he stopped right here, and stood still with his
back to the opening, looking across the front hall at some
imperfection he fancied he detected in the joining of a carved
cornice. Ray stood on the staircase, a little way up, facing the
gorgeous window, and studying its glow of color.

"It won't do. The meeting of the pattern isn't perfect. Those
grape-bunches come too near together, and there's a leaf-tip taken
off at the corner. What a bungle! Come and look, Ray."

Ray turned her face toward him as he spoke, and saw what thrilled
her through with sudden horror. Saw him, utterly forgetful of where
he stood, against the dangerous vacancy, his heel upon the very
edge, beyond which would be death!

A single movement an inch further, and he would be off his balance.
Behind him was a fall of thirty feet, down to those piles of brick
and timber. And he would make the movement unless he were instantly
snatched away. His head was thrown back,--his shoulders leaned
backward, in the attitude of one who is endeavoring to judge of an
effect a little distance off.

Her face turned white, and her limbs quivered under her.

One gasping breath--and then--she turned, made two steps upward, and
flung herself suddenly, as by mischance, prostrate along the broad,
slowly-sloping stairs.

Half a dozen thoughts, in flashing succession, shaped themselves
with and into the action. She wondered, afterward, recollecting them
in a distinct order, how there had been time, and how she had
thought so fast.

"I must not scream. I must not move toward him. I must make him come
this way."

In the two steps up--"He might not follow; he would not understand.
He _must_: I must _make_ him come!" And then she flung herself down,
as if she had fallen.

Once down, her strength went from her as she lay; she turned really
faint and helpless.

It was all over. He was beside her.

"What is the matter, Ray? Are you ill? Are you hurt?" he said,
quickly, stooping down to lift her up. She sat up, then, on the
stair. She could not stand.

A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the
solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house.

"Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near
you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from
the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up
again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes."

"Was _that_ it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr.
Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs.

"I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I
could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself,
instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint
away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would."

"That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and
glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it,
without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more
would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a
christening as that!"

The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just
rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail.

"Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water."

"She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say,"
said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact
to think of this, but not to go without saying it.

"A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her
hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her
feelings. If she had come _at_ you, as half the women in the world
would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister,
Sunderline?"

"No, sir--only a friend."

"Ah! _onlier_ than a sister, may be? Well!"

Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look.

"I beg your pardon. It's none of my business."

"It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it
were, there would be no pardon to beg."

"You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say
that. I tell you what; if you _had_ come to grief, at the very end
of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put
the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece
of Friday luck as that!"

There were long pauses between the talk, as Ray and Frank drove back
together into the city.

"Ray!" Frank said at last, suddenly, just as they came opposite to
the row of little brown big-hatted houses, where they had talked
about the bonny bowls,--"My life is either worth more or less to me,
after this. You are the only woman in the world I could like to owe
it to. Will you take what I owe? Will you be the _onliest_ woman in
the world to me?"

Oddly enough, that word of Mr. Newrich's, that had half affronted
him, came up to his lips involuntarily and unexpectedly, now. Words
are apt to come up so--in a sort of spite of us--that have made an
impression, even when it has been that of simple misuse.

Ray did not answer. She felt it quite impossible to speak.

Frank waited--three minutes perhaps. Then he said,

"Tell me, Ray. If it is to be no, let me know it."

"If it had been no. I could have said it sooner," Ray answered,
softly.

       *       *       *       *       *

"May I come back?" he asked, when he helped her down at the door in
Pilgrim Street, and held her hand fast for a minute.

"O yes; come back and see mother," Ray replied, her face all
beautiful with smile and color.

Mother knew all the story, that minute, as well as when it was told
her afterward. She saw her child's face, and that holding of the
hand, from her upper window, where a half blind had fallen to.
Mothers do not miss the home-comings from such drives as that.

       *       *       *       *       *

"There's one thing, Frank,"--said Ray. She was standing with him,
three hours afterward, at the low step of the entrance, he above her
on the sidewalk, looking down upon her upturned face. The happy tea
and family evening were over; that first family evening, when one
comes acknowledged in, who has been almost one of the family before;
and they were saying the first beautiful good-by, which has the
beginning of all joining and belonging in it. "There is one thing,
Frank. I'm under contract for the present; for quite a while. I'm
going into the bread business, after all. I've promised Miss Grapp
to take her bakery, and manage it for her, for a year or so."

"Who--is--Miss Grapp?" exclaimed Frank, pausing between the words in
his astonishment.

Ray laughed. "Haven't I told you? I thought everybody knew. It's too
long a story for the door-step. When you come again"--

"That'll be to-morrow."

"I'll tell you all about it."

"You'll have to manage the bakery and me too, somehow, before--a
'year or so'! How long do you suppose I expect to wait?"

"Dear me! how long _have_ you waited?" returned Ray, demurely.

She only meant the three hours since they had been engaged; but it
is a funny fact about the nature and prerogative of a man, that he
may take years in which to come to the point of asking--years in
which perhaps a woman's life is waiting, with a wear and an
uncertainty in it; but the point of _having_ must be moved up then,
to suit his sudden impatience of full purpose.

A woman shrinks from this hurry; she wants a little of the blessed
time of sure anticipation, after she knows that they belong to one
another; a time to dream and plan beautiful things together in; to
let herself think, safely and rightly, all the thoughts she has had
to keep down until now. It is the difference of attitude in the
asking and answering relations; a man's thoughts have been free
enough all along; he has dreamt his dream out, and stands claiming
the fulfillment.

Dot had her hair all down that night, and her nightgown on, and was
sitting on the bed, with her feet curled up, while Ray stood in
skirts and dressing-sack, before the glass, her braids half
unfastened, stock-still, looking in at herself, or through her own
image, with a most intent oblivion of what she pretended to be there
for.

"Well, Ray! Have you forgotten the way to the other side of your
head, or are you enchanted for a hundred years? I shall want the
glass to-morrow morning."

Ray roused up from her abstraction.

"I was thinking," she said.

"Yes'm. I suppose you'll be always thinking now. You had just
outgrown that trick, a little. It was the affliction of my
childhood; and now it's got to begin again. 'Don't talk, Dot; I'm
thinking.' Good-by."

There was half a whimper in Dorothy's last word.

"Dot! You silly little thing!"

And Rachel came over to the bedside, and put her arms round Dorothy,
all crumpled as she was into a little round white ball.

"I was thinking about Marion Kent."




CHAPTER XVI.

RECOMPENSE.


That night, Marion Kent was fifty miles off, in the great, mixed-up,
manufacturing town of Loweburg.

She had three platform dresses now,--the earnings of some half-dozen
"evenings." The sea-green silk would not do forever, in place after
place; they would call her the mermaid. She must have a quiet,
elegant black one, and one the color of her hair, like that she had
seen the pretty actress, Alice Craike, so bewitching in. She could
deepen it with chestnut trimmings, all toning up together to one
rich, bright harmony. Her hair was "_blond cendré_,"--not the
red-golden of Alice Craike's; but the same subtle rule of art was
available; "_café-au-lait_" was her shade; and the darker velvet
just deepened and emphasized the effect.

She was putting this dress on to-night, with some brown and golden
leaves in the high, massed braids of her hair. She certainly knew
how to make a picture of herself; she was just made to make a
picture of.

The hotel waitress who had brought up her tea on a tray, had gone
down with a report that Miss Kent was "stunning;" and two or three
housemaids and a number of little boys were vibrating and loitering
about the hall and doorway below, watching for her to come down to
her carriage. It was just as good, so far as these things went, as
if she had been Mrs. Kemble, or Christine Nilsson, or anybody.

And Marion, poor child, had really got no farther than "these
things," yet. She reached, for herself, to just what she had been
able to appreciate in others. She had taken in the housemaid and
small-boy view of famousness, and she was having her shallow little
day of living it. She had not found out, yet, how short a time that
would last. "Verily," it was said for us all long ago, "ye shall
have each your reward," such as ye look and labor for.

One great boy was waiting for her, _ex officio_, and without
disguise,--the President of the Lyceum Club, before which she was to
read to-night.

He sat serenely in the reception-room, ready to hand her to her
carriage, and accompany her to the hall.

The little boys observed him with exasperation. The housemaids
dropped their lower jaws with wonder, when she swept down the
staircase; her _café-au-lait_ silk rolling and glittering behind
her, as if the breakfast for all Loweburg were pouring down the
Phoenix Hotel stairs.

The President of the People's Lyceum Club heard the rustle of
elegance, and met her at the stair-foot with bowing head and bended
arm.

That was a beautiful, triumphant moment, in which she crossed the
space between the staircase and the door, and went down over the
sidewalk to the hack. What would you have? There could not have been
more of it, in her mind, though all Loweburg were standing by. She
was Miss Kent, going out to give her Reading. What more could Fanny
Kemble do?

Around the hall doors, when they arrived, other great boys were
gathered. She was passed in quickly, to the left, through some
passages and committee rooms, to the other end of the building,
whence she would enter, in full glory, upon the platform.

She came in gracefully; a little breezy she could not help being;
it was the one movement of the universe to her at that moment, her
ten steps across the platform,--her little half bow, half droop,
before the applauding audience,--the taking up of the bouquet laid
upon her table,--her smile, with a scarcely visible inclination
again,--and the sitting down among those waves of amber that rose up
shining in the gas-light, about her, as she subsided among her
silken draperies.

She was imitative; she had learned the little outsides of her art
well; but you see the art was not high.

It was the same with her reading. She had had drill enough to make
her elocution passable; her voice was clear and sweet; she had a
natural knack, as we have seen, for speaking to the galleries. When
there was a sensational, dramatic point to make, she could make it
after her external fashion, strongly. The deep magnetism--the
electric thrill of soul-reality--these she had nothing to do with.

Yet she read some things that thrilled of themselves; the very words
of which, uttered almost anyhow, were fit to bring men to their feet
and women to tears, with sublimity and pathos. Somebody had helped
her choose effectively, and things very cunningly adaptive to
herself.

The last selection for the first part of her reading to-night was
Mrs. Browning's "Court Lady."

"Wear your fawn-colored silk when you read this," Virginia Levering
had counseled.

Her self-consciousness made the first lines telling.

  "Her hair was tawny with gold,--her eyes with purple were dark;
   Her cheeks pale opal burned with a red and restless spark."

Her head, bright with its golden-dusty waves and braids, leaned
forward under the light as she uttered the words; her great,
gray-blue eyes, deepening with excitement to black, lifted
themselves and looked the crowd in the face; the color mounted like
a crimson spark; she glowed all over. Yes, over; not up, nor
through; but some things catch from the outside. A flush and rustle
ran over the faces, and the benches; she felt that every eye was
upon her, lit up with an admiring eagerness, that answered to her
eagerness to be admired.

O, this was living! There was a pulse and a rush in this! Marion
Kent _was_ living, with all her nature that had yet waked up, at
that bewildering and superficial moment.

But she has got to live deeper. The Lord, who gave her life, will
not let her off so. It will come. It is coming.

We know not the day nor the hour; though we go on as if we knew all
things and were sure.

At this very instant, there is close upon you, Marion Kent, one of
those lightning shafts that run continually quivering to and fro
about the earth, with their net-work of fire, in this storm of life
under which we of to-day are born. All the air is tremulous with
quick, converging nerves; concentrating events, bringing each soul,
as it were, into a possible focus continually, under the forces that
are forging to bear down upon it. There are no delays,--no respites
of ignorance. Right into the midst of our most careless or most
selfish doing, comes the summons that arrests us in the Name of the
King.

                             "She rose to her feet with a spring.
  _That_ was a Piedmontese! And this is the Court of the King!"

She was upon her feet, as if the impulse of the words had lifted
her; she had learned by rote and practice when and how to do it; she
had been poised for the action through the reading of all those last
stanzas.

She did it well. One hand rested by the finger-tips upon the open
volume before her; her glistening robes fell back as she gained her
full height,--she swayed forward toward the assembly that leaned
itself toward her; the left hand threw itself back with a noble
gesture of generous declaring; the fingers curving from the open
palm as it might have been toward the pallet of the dead soldier at
her side. She was utterly motionless for an instant; then, as the
applause broke down the silence, she turned, and grandly passed out
along the stage, and disappeared.

Within the door of the anteroom stood a messenger from the hotel. He
had a telegraph envelope in his hand; he put it into hers.

She tore it open,--not thinking, scarcely noticing; the excitement
of the instant just past moved her nerves,--no apprehension of what
this might be.

Then the lightning reached her: struck her through and through.

"Your ma's dying: come back: no money."

Those last words were a mistake; the whole dispatch, in its absurd
homeliness and its pitiless directness, was the work of old Mrs.
Knoxwell, the blacksmith's wife, used to hammers and nails, and
believing in good, forceful, honest ways of doing things; feeling
also a righteous and neighborly indignation against this child,
negligent of her worn and lonely mother; "skitin' about the country,
makin' believe big and famous. She would let her know the truth,
right out plain; it would be good for her."

What she had meant to write at the end was "Pneumonia;" but spelling
it "Numoney," it had got transmitted as we have seen.

It struck Marion through and through; but she did not feel it at
first. It met the tide of her triumph and elation full in her
throbbing veins; and the two keen currents turned to a mere
stillness for a moment.

Then she dropped down where she was, all into the golden mass and
shine of her bright raiment, with her hands before her eyes, the
paper crumpled in the clinch of one of them.

The President of the People's Lyceum Club made a little speech, and
dismissed the audience. "Miss Kent had received by telegraph most
painful intelligence from her family; was utterly unable to appear
again."

The audience behaved as an American People's Club knows so well how
to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection
of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove
rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night
train down from Vermont.

That was on Friday night.

On Sunday morning Frank Sunderline came in on the service train, and
went up to Pilgrim Street.

"Mrs. Kent is dead," he told Kay. "Marion is in awful trouble. Can't
you come out to her?"

Ray was just leaving the house to go to church. Instead, she went
with Frank to the horse-railroad station, catching the eleven
o'clock car. She had been expecting him in the afternoon, to take
her to drink tea with his mother, who was not able to come in to see
her.

In an hour, she went in at Mrs. Kent's white gate,--Frank leaving
her there. They both felt, without saying, that it would not be kind
to appear together. Marion had that news, though, as she had had the
other; from her Job's comforter, Mrs. Knoxwell, who was persistently
"sitting with her."

"There's Frank Sunderline and Ray Ingraham at the gate. She's
coming in. They're engaged. It's just out."

"What _do_ I care?" cried Marion, fiercely, turning upon her, and
astounding Mrs. Knoxwell by the sudden burst of angry words; for she
had not spoken for more than an hour, in which the blacksmith's wife
had administered occasional appropriate sentences of stinging
condolence and well-meant retrospection. "I wish you would go home!"

Every monosyllable was uttered with a desperate, wrathful
deliberateness and flinging away of all pretense and politeness.

"Well--'f I _never_!" gasped Mrs. Knoxwell, with a sound in her
voice as if she had received a blow in the pit of her stomach.

"Jest as you please, Marion--'f I ain't no more use!" And the
aggrieved matron, who had, as she said afterward in recounting it,
"done _everything_," left the scene of her labors and her
animadversions, with a face perfectly emptied of all expression by
her inability to "realize what she _did_ feel."

Ray Ingraham came in, went straight up to Marion, and took her into
her arms without a word. And Marion put her head down on Ray's
shoulder, and cried her very heart out.

"You needn't try to comfort me. I can't be comforted like anybody
else. It's the day of judgment come down into my life. I've sold my
birthright: I've nobody belonging to me any more. I wanted the
world--to be free in it; and I'm turned out into it now; and home's
gone--and mother.

"I never thought of her dying. I expected one of these days to do
for her, and not let her work any more. I meant to, Ray--I did,
truly! But she's dead--and I let her die!"

With sentences like these, Marion broke out now and again, putting
aside all Ray's consolations; going back continually to her
self-upbraidings, after every pause in which Ray had let her rest or
cry quietly; after every word with which she tried to prevail
against her despair and soothe her with some hope or promise.

"They are none of them for me!" she cried. "It would have been
better if I had never been born. Ray!" she said suddenly, in a
strained, hollow voice, grasping Rachel's arm and looking with wild,
swollen eyes into hers,--"I was just as bad by little Sue. I was
only fourteen then, but it was the same evil, unsuitable vanity and
selfishness. I was busy, while she was sick, making a white muslin
burnouse to wear to a fair. I had teased mother for it. It was a
silly thing for a girl like me to wear; it had a blue ribbon run in
the hem of the hood, and a bow and long blue ends behind. Poor
little Sue was just down with the fever. Mother had to go out, and
left me to tend her. She wanted some water--Oh!"

Marion broke down, and sobbed, with her head bowed to her knees as
she sat.

Ray sat perfectly still. She longed to beg her not to think about
it, not to say any more; but she knew she would feel better if she
did.

"I told her I'd go presently; and she waited--the patient little
thing! And I was making my blue bow, and fixing it on, and fussing
with the running, and I forgot! And she couldn't bear to bother me,
and didn't say a word, but waited till she dropped to sleep without
it; and her lips were so red and dry. It was a whole hour that I
let her lie so. She never knew anything after that.

"She waked up all in a rave of light-headedness!

"I thought I should never get over it, Ray. And I never did, way
down in my heart; but I got back into the same wretched nonsense,
and now--here's _mother_!

"It's no use to tell me. I've done it. I've lost my right. It'll
_never_ be given back to me."

"Marion--I wish you could have Mr. Vireo to talk to you; or
Luclarion Grapp. Won't you come home with me, and let them come to
see you? They _know_ about these things, dear."

"Would you take me home?" asked Marion, slowly, looking her in the
face.

"Yes, indeed. Will you come?"

"O, do take me and hide me away, and let me cry!"

She dropped herself, as it were passively, into Rachel Ingraham's
hands. She could not stay among the neighbors, she said. She could
not stay in that house alone, one day.

Ray stayed with her, until after the funeral.

Marion would not go to the church. She had let them decide
everything just as they pleased, thinking only that she could not
think about any of it. Mrs. Kent had been a faithful, humble
church-member for forty years, and the minister and her
fellow-members wanted her to be brought there. There was no room in
the little half-house, where she had lived, for neighbors and
friends to gather, and for the services properly to take place.

So it was decided.

But when the time came, and it was too late to change, Marion
said,--"She belonged to them, and they have done by her. They can
all go, but I can't. To sit up in the front pew as a mourner, and be
looked at, and prayed for, as if I had been a real child, and had
only _lost_ my mother! You know I can't, Ray. I will stay here, and
bear my punishment. May be if I bear it _all_ now--do you believe it
might make any difference?"

Ray stayed with her through the whole.

While all was still in the church, not ten rods off, a carriage came
for them to the little white gate. With the silken blinds down, and
the windows open behind them, it was driven to the cemetery, and in
beneath the sheltering trees, to a stopping place just upon a little
side turn, near the newly opened grave. No one, of those who
alighted from the vehicles of the short procession, knew exactly
when or how it had come.

The words of the prayer beside the grave,--most tenderly framed by
the good old minister, for the ear he knew they would reach--came in
soft and clear upon the pleasant air.

"And we know, Lord, as we lay these friends away, one after another,
that we give them into Thy hands,--into Thy heart; that we give into
Thy heart, also, all our love and our sorrow, and our penitence for
whatever more we might have been or done toward them; that through
Thee, our thought of them can reach them forever. We pray Thee to
forgive us, as we know we do forgive each other; to keep alive and
true in us the love by which we hold each other; and finally to
bring us face to face in Thy glory, which is Thy loving presence
among us all. We ask Thee to do this, by the pity and grace that are
in Thy Christ, our Saviour."

After that, they were driven straight in, over the long Avenue, to
the city, and to the quiet house in Pilgrim Street.

Ray herself, only, led Marion to the little room up-stairs which
had been made ready for her; Ray brought her up some tea, and made
her drink it; she saw her in bed for the night, and sat by her till
she fell asleep.




CHAPTER XVII.

ERRANDS OF HOPE.


"It is a very small world, after all."

Mr. Dickens, who touched the springs of the whole world's life, and
moved all its hearts with tears and laughter, said so; and we find
it out, each in our own story, or in any story that we know of or
try to tell. How things come round and join each other again,--how
this that we do, brings us face to face with that which we have
done, and with its work and consequence; how people find each other
after years and years, and find that they have not been very far
apart after all; how the old combinations return, and almost repeat
themselves, when we had thought that they were done with.

"As the doves fly to their windows," where the crumbs are waiting
for them, we find ourselves borne by we know not what instinct of
events,--yet we do know; for it is just the purpose of God, as all
instinct is,--toward these conjunctions and recurrences. We can see
at the end of weeks, or months, or years, how in some Hand the lines
must have all been gathered, and made to lead and draw to the
coincidence. We call it fate, sometimes; stopping short, either
blindly inapprehensive of the larger and surer blessedness, or too
shyly reverent of what we believe to say it easily out. Yet when we
read it in a written story, we call it the contrivance of the
writer,--the trick of the trade. Dearly beloved, the writer only
catches, in such poor fashion as he may, the trick of the Finger,
whose scripture is upon the stars.

Marion Kent is received into the Ingraham home. Hilary Vireo and
Luclarion Grapp preach the gospel to her.

"Christ died."

The minister uttered his evangel of mercy in those two eternal
words.

"Yes,--Christ," murmured the girl, who had never questioned about
such things before, and to whose lips the holy name had been
strange, unsuitable, impossible; but whose soul, smitten with its
sin and need, broke through the wretched outward hinderance now, and
had to cry up after the only Hope.

"But He could not forgive my letting _them_ die. I have been reading
the New Testament, Mr. Vireo, 'Whosoever shall offend one of these
little ones, it were better for him that a millstone"--

She could not finish the quotation.

"Yes,--'_offend_;' turn aside out of the right--away from Him;
mislead. Hurt their _souls_, Marion."

Marion gave a grasping look into his face. Her eyes seized the
comfort,--snatched it with a starving madness out of his.

"Do you think it means _that?_" she said.

"I do. I know the word 'offend' means simply to 'turn away.' We may
sin against each other's outward good, grievously; we may lay up
lives full of regrets to bear; we may hurt, we may kill; and then we
must repent according to our sin; but we _may_ repent, and they and
He will pity. It is the soul-killers--the corrupters--Christ so
terribly condemns."

"But listen to me, Marion," he began again. "God let his Christ
die--suffer--for the whole world. Christ lets them whom he counts
worthy, die--suffer--for _their_ world. The Lamb is forever slain;
the sacrifice of the holy is forever making. It is so that they come
to walk in white with Him; because they have washed their robes in
his blood--have partaken of his sacrifice. Do you not think they are
glad now, with his joy, to have given themselves for you; if it
brings you back? 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.'
He who knew how to lay hold of the one great heart of humanity by a
divine act, knows how to give his own work to those who can draw the
single cords, and save with love the single souls. They must suffer,
that they may also reign with Him. It is his gift to them and to
you. Will you take your part of it, and make theirs perfect? 'Let
not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.
Ye believe in me, believe also in these.'"

"But I want to come where they are. I want to love and do for them;
do something for them in heaven, Mr. Vireo, that I did not do here!
Can I _ever_ have my chances given back again?"

"You have them now. Go and do something for 'the least of these.'
That is how we work for our Christs who have been lifted up. Do
their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link
yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and the life of it.
The moment you give yourself, you shall feel that. You shall know
that you are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven. You
can be in heaven."

He left her with that to think of; left her with a new peace in her
eyes. She looked round that hour for something to do.

She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde's room. She knew Ray and Dot were
busy. She found the old lady's knitting work all in a snarl;
stitches dropped and twisted.

Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got
round so as to strike across her where she sat.

The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting
them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend's
touch. One of the girls would be up soon.

Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and
embers together, made the fire-place bright. She changed the blinds;
lowered one, raised another; kept the sunshine in the room, but
shielded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers. She
left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in
upon those quiet hands. Some instinct told her not to come between
them and that heavenly enfolding.

She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and
picked up, and with nimble stitches restored the lost rows.

Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled.

Then she offered to read. She had not read a word aloud from a
printed page since that night in Loweburg.

The old lady wanted a hymn. Marion read "He leadeth me." The book
opened of itself to that place. She read it as one whose soul went
searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it
forth. Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her
hand, she thought--she remembered--nothing. Her spirit went from out
of her, into spiritual places. So she followed the words with her
voice, as one really _reading_; interpreting as she went. All her
elocution had taught her nothing like this before. It had not
touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had
only been the trick of _saying out_, which is no giving at all.

"Thank you, dear," said the soft toothless voice. "That's very
pretty reading."

Dot came in, and she went away.

She had done a little "errand for her mother." A very little one;
she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but
her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,--"For your sake."

And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,--"He
that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple's
reward."

These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she
went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old
self-accusations.

After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp's, she used
sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull
down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she
went,--"Mother! Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I
am?" would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors.

"Give me something to do," she would say, when she got there.

And Luclarion would give her something to do; would keep her to tea,
or to dinner; and in the quietness, when they were left by
themselves, would say words that were given her to say in her own
character and fashion. It is so blessed that the word is given and
repeated in so many characters and fashions! That each one receives
it and passes it on, "in that language into which he was born."

"I wish you could hear Luclarion Grapp's way of talking," Ray
Ingraham had said to her just after she had brought her home. "The
kind of comfort she finds for the most wicked and miserable,--people
who have done such shocking things as you never dreamed of."

"I want to hear somebody talk to the very wickedest. If there's any
chance for me, there's where I must find it. I can't listen with the
pretty-good people, any longer. It doesn't belong to me, or do me
any good."

"Come and hear the gospel then." And so Ray had taken her down to
Neighbor Street, to Luclarion Grapp.

"But the sin stays. You can't wipe the fact out; and you've got to
take the consequences," said Marion Kent to the strong, simple woman
to whom she came as to a second-seer, to have her spiritual
destinies revealed to her.

"Yes," said Luclarion, gravely, but very sweetly, "you have. But the
consequences wear out. Everything wears out but the Lord's love. And
these old worn-out consequences--why, He can turn them into
blessings; and He means to, as they go along, and fade, and change;
until, by and by, we may be safer and stronger, and fuller of
everlasting life, than if we hadn't had them. I was vaccinated a
while ago this summer; everybody was down here; and I had a pretty
sick time. It took--ferocious! Well, I got over it, and then I
thought about it. I'd got something out of my system forever, that
might have come upon me, to destruction, all of a sudden; but now
never will! It appears to me almost as if we were sent into this
world, like a kind of hospital, to be vaccinated against the awful
evil--in our souls; to suffer a little for it; to take it the
easiest way we can take it, and so be safe. I don't know--and if you
hadn't repented, I wouldn't put it into your head; but it's been put
into my head, after I've repented, and I guess it's mainly true. See
here!"

And she took down a big leather-bound Bible, and opened it to the
fortieth chapter of Isaiah.

"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye
comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is
accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received
of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

"The Old Testament is full of the New; men's wickedness,--it took
wicked men to show the way of the Lord in the earth,--and God's
forgiveness, and his leading it all round right, in spite of them
all! Only He didn't turn the right side out all at once; it wasn't
safe to let them see both sides then. But He _trusts_ us now; He
gave his whole heart in Jesus Christ; He tells us, without any
keeping back, what He means our very sins shall do for us, and He
leaves it to us, after that, to take hold and help Him!"

"If it weren't for them! If I hadn't let them suffer and die!"

"Do you think He takes all this care of you,--lets them die for you
even,--and don't take as much for them? Do you think they ain't glad
and happy now? Do you think you could have hurt them, if you had
tried,--and you didn't try, you only let them alone a little,
forgetting? It says, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation.' If
we have somebody to take part with us against our sins, how much
more against our mistakes,--our forgettings! and _they_ are the
propitiation, too; their angels--the Christ of them--do always
behold the face of the Father. Their interceding is a part of the
Lord's interceding."

"If I could once more be let to do something for them--their very
selves!"

"You can. You can pray, 'Lord give them some beautiful heavenly joy
this day that thou knowest of, for my asking; because I cannot any
more do for them on the earth.' And then you can turn round to their
errands again."

Marion stood up on her feet.

"I will say that prayer for them every day! I shall believe in it,
because you told me. If I had thought of it myself, I should not
have dared. But He wouldn't send such a message by you if He didn't
mean it; would He?"

She believed in the God of Luclarion Grapp, as the children of
Israel believed in the God of Abraham.

"He never sends any message that He doesn't mean. He means the
comfort, just as much as He does the blaming."

Another day, a while after, Marion came down to Neighbor Street with
something very much on her mind to say, and to ask about. They had
all waited for her own plans to suggest themselves, or rather for
her work to be given her to do. No one had mentioned, or urged, or
even asked anything as to what she should do next.

But now it came of itself.

"Couldn't I get a place in some asylum, or hospital, do you think,
Miss Grapp? To be anything--an under nurse, or housemaid, or a cook
to make gruels? So that I could do for poor women and little
children? That would seem to come the very nearest. I'd come here,
if you wanted me; but I think I should like best to take care of
poor, good women, whose children had died, or gone away; who haven't
any one to look after them except asylum people. I like to treat
them as if they were all my mothers; and especially to wait on any
little girls that might be sick."

Was this the same Marion Kent who had given her whole soul, a
little while ago, to fine dressing and public appearing, and having
her name on placards? Had all that life dropped off from her so
easily?

Ah, you call it easily! _She_ knew, how, passing through the
furnace, it had been burned away; shriveled and annihilated with the
fierce, hot sweep of a spiritual flame before which all old,
unworthy desire vanishes:--the living, awful breath of remorse.

"I've no doubt you can," said Luclarion. "I'll make inquiries. Mrs.
Sheldon comes here pretty often; and she is one of the managers of
the Women and Children's Hospital. They've just got into a great,
new building, and there'll be people wanted."

"I'll begin with anything, remember; only to get in, and learn how.
I'll do so they'll want to keep me, and give me more; more work, I
mean. If I could come to nursing, and being depended on!"

"They train nurses, regular, there. Learn them, so that they can go
anywhere. Then you might some time have a chance to go to somebody
that needed great care; some sick woman or child, or a sick mother,
with little children round her"--

"And every day send up some good turn by them to mother and little
Sue!"

So they bound up her wounds for her, and poured in the oil and wine;
so they put her on their own beast of service, and set her in their
own way, and brought her to a place of abiding.

Three weeks afterward, she went in as housemaid for the children's
ward to the Hospital; the beautiful charity which stands, a token of
the real best growth of Boston, in that new quarter of her fast
enlarging borders, where the tide of her wealth and her life is
reaching out southward, toward the pure country pleasantness.

We must leave her there, now; at rest from her ambitions; reaching
into a peace they could never have given her; doing daily work that
comes to her as a sign and pledge of acceptance and forgiveness.

She sat by a child's bed one Sunday; the bed of a little girl ten
years old, whom she had singled out to do by for Susie's sake. She
had taken the place of a nurse, to-day, who was ill with an ague.

She read to Maggie the Bible story of Joseph, out of a little book
for children that had been Sue's.

After the child had fallen asleep, Marion fetched her Bible, to look
back after something in the Scripture words.

It had come home to her,--that betrayal and desertion of the boy by
his brethren; it stood with her now for a type of her own selfish
unfaithfulness; it thrust a rebuke and a pain upon her, though she
knew she had repented.

She wanted to see exactly how it was, when, in the Land beyond the
Desert, his brethren came face to face again with Joseph.

"Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye
sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life....
To save your lives with a great deliverance. So it was not you that
sent me hither, but God.... And thou shalt dwell in the land of
Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me."

A great throb of thankfulness, of gladness, came rushing up in her;
it filled her eyes with light; it flushed her cheeks with tender
color. The tears sprung shining; but they did not fall. Peace stayed
them. It was such an answer!

"How pretty you are!" said Maggie, awakening. "Please, give me a
drink of water."

It was as if Susie thought of it, and gave her the chance! She read
secret, loving meanings now, in things that had their meanings only
for her. She believed in spirit-communication,--for she knew it
came; but in its own beautiful, soul-to-soul ways; not by any
outward spells.

She went for the water; she found a piece of ice and put in it. She
came and raised the little head tenderly,--the child was hurt in the
back, and could not be lifted up,--and held the goblet to the gentle
lips; lips patient, like Sue's!

"O, you move me so nice! You give me the drink so handy!"

The beauty was in Marion's face still, warm with an inward joy; the
child's eyes followed her as she rose from bending over her.

"Real pretty," she said again, softly, liking to look at her. And
"real" was beginning to be the word, at last, for Marion Kent.

The glory of that poem she had read, thinking only of her own petty
triumph, came suddenly over her thought by some association,--she
could not trace out how. Its grand meaning was a meaning, all at
once, for her. With a changed phrasing, like a heavenly inspiration,
the last line sprang up in her mind, as if somebody stood by and
spoke it:--

  "These are the lambs of the sacrifice: _this_ is the court
      of the King!"




CHAPTER XVIII.

BRICKFIELD FARMS.


It was a rainy, desolate day.

It had rained the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and half
cleared up last night; then this morning it had sullenly and
tiresomely begun again.

All the forenoon it grew worse; in the afternoon, heavy, pelting,
streaming showers came down, filling the Kiln Hollow with mist, and
hiding the tops of the hills about it with low, rolling,
ever-gathering and resolving clouds.

It seemed as if all the autumn joy were over; as if the pleasant
days were done with till another year. After this, the cold would
set in.

Mrs. Jeffords had a bright fire built in Mrs. Argenter's room,
another in the family sitting-room. It looked cosy; but it reminded
the sojourners that they had not simply to draw themselves into
winter-quarters, and be comfortable; their winter-quarters were yet
to seek.

Sylvie had been cracking a plateful of butternuts; picking out
meats, I mean, from the cracked nuts, to make a plateful; and that,
if you know butternuts, you know is no small task. She brought them
to her mother, with some grated maple sugar sprinkled among and over
them.

"This is what you liked so much at the Shakers' in Lebanon," she
said. "See if it isn't as nice as theirs, I think it is fresher.
Here is a tiny little pickle-fork, to eat with."

Mrs. Argenter took the offered dainty.

"You are a dear child," she said. "Come and eat some too."

"O, I ate as I went along. Now, I'll read to you." And she took up
"Blindpits," which her mother had laid down.

"If it only wouldn't storm so," said Mrs. Argenter. "Mrs. Jeffords
says there will be a freshet. The roads will be all torn up. We
shall never be able to get home."

"O yes, we shall," said Sylvie, cheerily; putting down the wonder
that arose obtrusively in her own mind as to where the home would be
that they should go to.

"Did Mrs. Jeffords tell you about last year's freshet? And the
apples?"

"She said they had an awful flood. The brooks turned into rivers,
and the rivers swallowed up everything."

"O, she didn't get to the funny part, then?" said Sylvie. "She
didn't tell you about the apples?"

"No. I think she keeps the funny parts for you, Sylvie."

"May be she does. She isn't sure that you feel up to them, always.
But I guess she means them to come round, when she tells them to me.
You see they had just been gathering their apples, in that great
lower orchard,--five acres of trees, and such a splendid crop! There
they were, all piled up,--can't you imagine? A perfect picture! Red
heaps, and yellow heaps; and greenings, and purple pearmains, and
streaked seek-no-furthers. Like great piles of autumn leaves! Well,
the flood came, and rose up over the flats, into the lower end of
the orchard. They went down over night, and moved all the piles
further up, The next day, they had to move them again. And the next
morning after that, when they woke up, the whole orchard was under
water, and every apple gone. Mr. Jeffords said he got down just in
time to see the last one swim round the corner. And when the flood
had fallen,--there, half a mile below, spread out over the meadow,
was three hundred barrels of apple sauce!"

Mrs. Argenter laughed a feeble little _expected_ laugh; her heart
was not free to be amused with an apple-story. No wonder Mrs.
Jeffords kept the funny parts for Sylvie. Mrs. Argenter quenched her
before she could possibly get to them. But was Sylvie's heart free
for amusement? What was the difference? The years between them? Mrs.
Jeffords was a far older woman than Mrs. Argenter, and had had her
cares and troubles; yet she and Sylvie laughed like two girls
together, over their work and their stories. That was it,--the work!
Sylvie was doing _all she could_. The cheerfulness of doing followed
irresistibly after, into the loops and intervals of time, and kept
out the fear and the repining.

"There was nothing that chippered you up so, as being real driving
busy," Mrs. Jeffords said.

Mrs. Argenter sat in her low easy-chair, watched away the time, and
worried about the time to come. It left no leisure for a laugh.

Perhaps the hardest thing that Sylvie did through the day, was the
setting to work to "chipper" her mother up. It was lifting up a
weight that continually dropped back again.

"Do they think this rain will ever be over?" asked Mrs. Argenter,
turning her face toward the dripping panes again.

"Why, yes, mother; rains always _have_ been over sometime. They
never knew one that wasn't, and they go by experience."

There was nothing more to be said upon the rain topic, after that
simple piece of logic.

"If there doesn't come Badgett up the hill in all the pour!"

Badgett drove the daily stage from Tillington up through Pemunk and
Sandon. He came round by Brickfields when there was anybody to
bring.

Badgett drove up over the turf door-yard, close to the porch. He
jumped off, unbuttoned the dripping canvas door, and flung it up.

Mrs. Jeffords was in the entry on the instant; surprised, puzzled,
but all ready to be hospitable, to she didn't know whom. Relations
from Indiana, as likely as not. That is the way people arrive in the
country; and a whole houseful to stay over night does not startle
the hostess as an unexpected guest to dinner may a city one.

But the persons who alighted from the clumsy stage-wagon were Mr.
Christopher Kirkbright, Miss Euphrasia, and Desire Ledwith.

"Didn't you get our letter?" said Miss Euphrasia, as Sylvie, from
her mother's door-way, saw who she was, and sprang forward.

"Why, no, we didn't get no letter," said Mrs. Jeffords. "Father
hasn't been to the office for two days, it's stormed so continual.
But you're just as welcome, exactly. Step right in here." And she
flung open the door of her best parlor, where the new boughten
carpet was, for the damp feet and the dripping waterproof.

"No, indeed; not there; we couldn't have the conscience."

"'Tain't very comfortable either, after all," said Mrs. Jeffords,
changing her own mind in a bustle. "It's been kinder shut up. Come
right out to the sittin'-room-fire finally."

Mr. Kirkbright and Miss Ledwith followed her; Miss Euphrasia went
right into Mrs. Argenter's room, after she had taken off her
waterproof in the hall.

As she came in at the door, a great flash of sunshine streamed from
under the western clouds, in at the parlor window, followed her
across the hall and enveloped her in light as she entered.

"Why, the storm's over!" cried Sylvie, joyfully. "You come in on a
sunbeam, like the Angel Gabriel. But you always do. How came you to
come?"

"I came to answer your letter. You know I don't like to write very
well. And I've brought my brother, and a dear friend of mine whom I
want you to know. It did not rain in Boston when we started, but it
came on again before noon, and all the afternoon it has been a
splendid down-pour. Something really worth while to be out in, you
know; not a little exasperating drizzle. That's the kind of rain one
can't bear, and catches cold in. How the showers swept round the
hills, and the cascades thundered and flashed as we came by! What a
lovely region you have discovered!"

"It's so beautiful that you're here! We'll go down to the cascades
to-morrow. Won't you just come and introduce me to the others, and
then come back to mother?"

The others were in the family-room, which was also dining-room. In
the kitchen beyond, Mrs. Jeffords' stove was roaring up for an early
tea, and she was whipping griddle-cakes together.

"My brother, Mr. Kirkbright--Miss Argenter. Miss Desire
Ledwith--Sylvie."

The two girls shook hands, and looked in each others faces.

"How clear, and strong, and trusty!" Sylvie thought.

"You dear little spirit!" thought Desire, seeing the delicate face,
and the brave sweetness through it.

This was the second real introduction Miss Euphrasia had made within
ten days. It was a great deal, of that sort, to happen in such space
of time.

"If it hadn't been for the storm, we might have hurried down and
missed you. Mother was beginning to dread the coming on of the
cold," said Sylvie. "But the rain came and settled it, for just now.
That rested me. A real good 'can't help' is such a comfort."

"The Father's No. Shutting us in with its grand, gentle forbiddance.
Many a rain-storm is that. I always feel so safe when I am shut up
by really impossible weather."

After the tea, they were still in time for the whole sunset,
wonderful after the storm.

Desire had gone from the table to the half-glazed door which opened
from the room into a broad porch, looking out directly across the
hollow, along a valley-line of side-hills, to the distant blue
peaks.

"O, come!" she cried back to the others, as she hastened out upon
the platform. "It is marvelous!"

Heavy lines of clouds lay banked together in the west, black with
the remnant and recoil of tempest; between these, through rifts and
breaks, poured down the sunlight across bright spaces into the
bosoms of the hills lighting them up with revelations. The sloping
outlines shone golden green with lingering summer color, and
discovered each separate wave and swell of upland. The searching
shafts fell upon every tree and bush and spire, moving slowly over
them and illuminating point after point, making each suddenly seem
distinct and near. What had been a mere margin of distant woods,
stood eliminated and relieved in bough and stem and leafage, with a
singular pre-Raphaelitic individuality. It was the standing-out of
all things in the last radiance; called up, one by one under the
flash of judgment--beautiful, clear, terrible.

Then the clouds themselves, as the sun dropped down, drank in the
splendor. They turned to rose and crimson; they floated, and spread,
and broke, and drifted up the valley, against the hills on right and
left. Rags and shreds of them, trailing gorgeous with color, clung
where the ridges caught them, and streamed like fragments of
heavenly banners. The sky repeated the October woods,--the woods the
sky,--in vivid numberless hues.

The sunset rolled up and around the watchers as they gazed. They
were _in_ it; it lay at their very feet, and beside them at either
hand. Below, the sheet of water in the "Clay-Pits," gleamed like
burnished gold. Here and there, from among the tree-tops, came up
the smoke of little cascades, reaching for baptism into the
pervading glory.

It was chilly, and they had to go in; but they kept coming back to
window and door, looking out through the closed sashes, and calling,
"Now! now! O, was there ever anything like that?"

At last it turned into a heavenly vision of still, far, shining
waters; the earth and the pools upon it darkened, and the sky
gathered up into itself the glory, and disclosed its own wider and
diviner beauty.

A great rampart of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like
rocks along a shore. Up over them rushed light, crimson surf,
foaming, tossing. Beyond, a rosy sea. In it, little golden boats
floated. The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there
it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender with
saffron-touched blue.

So the tempest of trouble met the tempest of love in the end of the
day, and the world rolled on into the night under the glory and
peace of their rushing and melting together.

After all that, they came back by a step and a word--these mortal
observers,--to practical consultation such as mortals must have, and
especially if they be upon their travels; to questions about
bestowal, and the homely, kindly, funny little details of Mrs.
Jeffords' hospitality.

"Where should she put them? Why, she was _always_ ready. To be sure,
the _front_ upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer
company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room
enough!"

"There's the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over
the sittin'-room, and there's _my_ room! I ain't never put out!"

"But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be."

"Don't _care_!" said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly. "There's the
kitchen bedroom, that I keep apurpose to camp down in. It's all
right. Don't you worry."

"You never care; that's the reason I do worry," said Sylvie.

"I've learnt not to care," said Mrs. Jeffords. "'Tain't no use. You
must take things as they are. They will be so, and you can't help
it. If they fall right side up, well and good; if they're wrong side
up, let 'em lay. And they ain't wrong side up yet, I can tell you.
You just go and sit down and enjoy yourselves."

Mrs. Argenter was brighter this evening than she had been for a
long while. "It was nice to be among people again," she said, when
the evening was over.

"So it is," said Sylvie. "But somehow I didn't feel the difference
the other way. I think I always _am_ among people. At least it never
seems to me as if they were very far off. Next door mayn't be
exactly alongside, but it is next door for all that, and it is in
the world. And the world wakes up all together every morning,--that
is, as fast as the morning gets round."

With her "mayn't be's" and her "is'es," Sylvie was unconsciously
making a habit of the trick of Susan Nipper, but with a kindlier
touch to her antitheses than pertained to those of that acerb
damsel.

Mrs. Argenter wanted tangible presences. She had not reached so far
as her child into that inner living where all feel each other,
knowing that "these same tribulations"--and joys also--are
accomplished among the brotherhood that is in all the earth;
knowing, too,--ah! that is the blessedness when we come to it,--that
we may walk, already, in the heavenly places with all them that are
alive unto each other in the Lord.

The next morning after deep rains in a hill-country is a morning of
wonders; if you can go out among them, and know where to find them.
Down the ravines, from the far back, greater heights, rush and
plunge the streams whitened with ecstasy, turned to sweet wild
harmonies as they go. It is a day of glory for the water-drops that
are born to make a part of it.

Sylvie knew the way down through the glen, from fall to fall, half a
mile apart. She and Bob Jeffords had come down to them, time and
again; after nearly every little summer shower; for with all the
heat, the night rains had been plentiful and frequent, and the
water-courses had been kept full. The brick-fields, that looked so
near from the farms, were really more than two miles away; and it
was a constant descent, from brow to brow, over the range of uplands
between the Jeffords' place and the Basin.

"The First Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading
the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which
nobody minded, all having come defended with rubbers and
waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks
of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn
color. Everything shone and dripped; the very stones glittered.

They climbed up rocky slopes, on which the short gray moss grew,
cushiony. They followed the line of maples and alders and evergreens
that sentineled and hid away the shouting stream, spreading their
skirts and intertwining their arms to shelter it, like the privacy
of some royal child at play, and to keep back from the pilgrims the
beautiful surprise. Upon a rough table-ledge, they came to it at
last; the place where they could lean in between the trees, and
overlook and underlook the shining tumult,--the shifting, yet
enduring apparition of delight.

It came in two leaps, down a winding channel, through which it
seemed to turn and spring, like some light, graceful, impetuous
living creature. You _felt_ it reach the first rock-landing; you
were conscious of the impetus which forced it on to take the second
spring which brought it down beneath your feet. And it kept
coming--coming. It was an eternal moment; a swift, vanishing, yet
never over-and-done movement of grace and splendor. That is the
magic of a waterfall. Something exquisite by very suggestion of
evanescence, caught _in transitu_, and held for the eye and mind to
dwell on.

They were never tired of looking. The chance would not come,--that
ought to be a pause,--for them to turn and go away.

"But there are more," Sylvie said at length, admonishing them. "And
the Second Cataract is grander than this."

"You number them going down," said Mr. Kirkbright.

"Yes. People always number things as they come to them, don't they?
Our first is somebody's else last, I suppose, always."

"What a little spirit that is!" said Christopher Kirkbright to Miss
Euphrasia, dropping back to help his sister down a rocky plunge.

"A little spirit waked up by touch of misfortune," said Miss
Euphrasia. "She would have gone through life blindfolded by purple
and fine linen, if things had been left as they were with her."

Desire and Sylvie walked on together.

"Leave them alone," said Miss Kirkbright to her brother. And she
stopped, and began to gather handfuls of the late ferns.

Now she had the chance given her, Desire said it straight out, as
she said everything.

"I came up here after you, Miss Argenter. Did you know it?"

"No. After me? How?" asked Sylvie.

"To see if you and your mother would come and make your home with us
this winter,--pretty much as you do with Mrs. Jeffords. I can say
_us_, because Hazel Ripwinkley, my cousin, is with me nearly all
the time; but for the rest of it, I am all the family there really
is, now that Rachel Froke has gone away; unless you came to call my
dear old Frendely 'family,' as I do; seeing that next to Rachel, she
is root and spring of it. You could help me; you could help her; and
I think you would like my work. I should be glad of you; and your
mother could have Rachel Froke's gray parlor. It is a one-sided
proposition, because, you see, I know all about you already, from
Miss Euphrasia. You will have to take me at hazard, and find out by
trying."

"Do you think the old proverb isn't as true of good words as of
mischief,--that a dog who will fetch a bone will carry a bone?" said
Sylvie, laughing with the same impulse by which clear drops stood
suddenly in her eyes, and a quick rosiness came into her face. "Do
you suppose Miss Euphrasia hasn't told me of you?"

"I never thought I was one of the people to be told about," said
Desire, simply. "Do you think you could come? Miss Euphrasia
believed it would be what you wanted. There is plenty of room, and
plenty of work. I want you to know that I mean to keep you honestly
busy, because then you will understand that things come out honestly
even."

"Even! Dear Miss Ledwith!"

"Then you'll try it?"

"I don't know how to thank Miss Euphrasia or you."

"There are no thanks in the bargain," said Desire, smiling. "I want
you; if you want me, it is a Q.E.D. If we _do_ dispute about
anything, we'll leave it out to Miss Euphrasia. She knows how to
make everything right. She shall be our broker. It is a good thing
to have one, in some kinds of trade."

They had come around the curve in the road now, that brought them
alongside the shady gorge at the foot of Cone Hill. Here was the
little group of brick-makers' houses; empty, weather-beaten, their
door-yards overgrown with brakes and mulleins. Beyond, up the ledge,
to which a rough drive-way, long disused, led off, was the quaint,
rambling edifice that with its feet of stone and brick went "walking
up" the mountain.

"You must go in and see it," Sylvie said. "But first,--this is the
way to the cascade."

Another bar-place let them in again to another narrow, wild,
bush-grown path around the edge of the cliff, the lower spur of the
great hill; and down over shelving rocks, a long, gradual descent,
to the foot of the fall.

The water foamed and rippled to their feet, as they walked along its
varying edge-line on the smooth, sloping stone that stretched back
against the perpendicular rampart of the cliff. The fall itself was
hidden in the turn around which, above, they had followed the
tangled pathway.

At the farthest projection of the platform they were now treading,
they came upon it; beneath it, rather, they looked back and up at
its showery silver sheet, falling in sweet, continual thunder into
the dark, hollow, rock-encircled pool, thence to tumble away
headlong, from point to point, lower and lower yet, by a thousand
little breaks and plunges, till it came out into a broad meadow
stretch miles and miles away.

"What a hurry it is in, to get down where it is wanted," said
Desire.

She had seated herself beside the curling edge of the swift stream,
where it seemed to trace and keep by its own will its boundary upon
the nearly level rock, and was gazing up where the white radiance
poured itself as if direct from out the blue above.

Mr. Kirkbright stood behind her.

"Most things come to us at last so quietly," he said. "It is good to
feel and see what a rush it starts with,--out of that heart of
heaven."

Desire had not said that; but it was just what she had been feeling.
Eager to get to us; coming in a hurry. Was that God's impulse toward
us?

"Making haste to help and satisfy the world," Mr. Kirkbright said
again.

"A river of clear water of life, coming down out of the throne,"
said Miss Euphrasia. "What a sign it is!"

Mr. Kirkbright walked along the margin of the ledge, farther and
farther down. He tried with his stick some stones that lay across
the current at a narrow point where beneath the opposite cliff it
bent and turned away, losing itself from their sight as they stood
here. Then he sprang across; crept, stooping, along the narrow
foothold under the projecting rock, until he could follow with his
eye the course of the rapid water, falling continually to its lower
level as it sped on and on, all its volume gathered in one deep,
rocky, unchangeable bed.

"What a waiting power!" he exclaimed, springing safely back, and
coming up toward them. "What a stream for mills! And it turns
nothing but the farmers' grists, till it gets to Tillington."

Desire was a very little disappointed at this utilitarianism. She
had been so glad and satisfied with the reading of its type; the
type of its far-back impulse.

"If there had been mills here, we should not have seen that," she
said; forgetting to explain what.

But Christopher Kirkbright knew.

"What was it that we did see?" he asked, coming beside her.

"The gracious hurry," she answered, with a half-vexed surprise in
her eyes.

"And what is the next thing to seeing that? Isn't it to partake? To
be in a gracious hurry also, if we can?"

A smile came up now in Desire's face, and effaced gently the
vexation and the surprise.

"Do you know what a legible face you have?" asked Mr. Kirkbright,
seating himself near her on a step of rock.

Desire was a little disturbed again by this movement. The others had
begun to walk on, up the ledge, toward the old brick house;
gathering as they went, ferns that had escaped the frost, others
that had delicately whitened in it, and gorgeous maple-leaves, swept
from topmost, inaccessible branches,--where the most glorious color
always hangs,--by last night's rain and wind.

It was so foolish of her to have sat there until he came and did
this. Now she could not get right up and go away. This feeling,
coming simultaneously with his question about her legible face, was
doubly uncomfortable. But she had to answer. She did it briefly.

"Yes. It is a great bother. I don't like coarse print."

"Nor I. But my eyes are good; and the fine print is clear. I should
like very much to tell you of something that I have to do, Miss
Ledwith. I should like your thoughts upon it. For, you see, I have
hardly yet got acquainted with my ground. From what my sister tells
me, I think your work leads naturally up to mine. I should like to
find out whether it is quite ready for the join."

"I haven't much work," said Desire. "Luclarion Grapp has; and Miss
Kirkbright, and Mr. Vireo. I only help,--with some money that
belongs to it."

"And I have more money that belongs to it," said Mr. Kirkbright.

It was a curious way for a rich man and a rich woman to talk to each
other, about their money. But I do not believe it ought to be
curious.

"Don't you often come across people who cannot be helped much just
where they are? Don't you feel, sometimes, that there ought to be a
place to send them to, away, out of their old tracks, where they
could begin again; or even hide a while, in shame and repentance,
before they _dare_ to begin again?"

"I _know_ Luclarion does," said Desire, earnestly.

She would have it, still, that there was no work in her own name for
him to ask about.

"I must see this Luclarion of yours," said Mr. Kirkbright.
"Meanwhile, since I have got you to talk to, pray tell me all you
can, whoever found it out. Isn't there a need for a City of Refuge?
And suppose a place like this, away from the towns, where God's
beautiful water is coming down in a hurry, with a cry of power in
every leap,--where there is a great lake-basin full of material for
work, just stored away against men's need for their earning and
their building,--suppose this place taken and used for the giving of
a new chance of life to those who have failed and gone wrong, or
have perhaps hardly ever had any right chances. Do you think we
could manage it so as to _keep_ it a place of refuge and new
beginning, and not let it spoil itself?"

"With the right people at each end, why not?" said Desire. "But O,
Mr. Kirkbright! how can I tell you! It is such a great idea; and I
don't know anything."

These words, that she happened to say, brought back to her--by one
of those little lightning threads that hold things together, and
flash and thrill our recollections through us--the rainy morning
when she went round in the storm to her Aunt Ripwinkley's, because
she could not sit in the bay-window at home, and wonder whether "it
was all finished," or whether anybody had got to contrive anything
more, "before they could sit behind plate-glass and let it rain."
She remembered it all by those same words that she had spoken then
to Rachel Froke,--"Behold, we know not anything,--Tennyson and I!"

Nonsense stays by us, often, in stickier fashion than sense does;
that is the good of nonsense, perhaps; it sticks, and draws the
sense along after it.

"I think one thing is certain," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Human
creatures are made for 'moving on.' I believe the Swedenborgians are
right in this,--that the places above, or below, are filled from the
human race, or races; and that the Lord Himself couldn't do much
with beings made as He has made us, without places to _move us
into_. New beginnings,--evenings and mornings; the very planet
cannot go on its way without making them for itself. Life bound down
to poor conditions,--and all conditions are poor in the sense of
being limited while the life is resistlessly expanding,--festers;
fevers; breaks out in violence and disease. I believe we want new
places more than anything. I came up here on purpose to see if I
could not begin one."

"How happened you to come just here?" questioned Desire. "What could
you know of this, beforehand?"

"My sister had Miss Argenter's letter; and at once she remembered
the name of the place and its story. That is the way things come
together, you know. My brother-in-law, Mr. Sherrett, owns, or did
own, this whole property. A 'dead stick,' he thought it. Well,
Aaron's rod was another dead stick. But he laid it up before the
Lord, and it blossomed."

Desire sat silent, looking at the white water in its gracious hurry.
Pouring itself away, unused,--unheeded; yet waiting there, pouring
always. The tireless impulse of the divine help; vehement; eager,
with a human eagerness; yet so patient, till men's hands should
reach out and lay hold of it!

She dreamed out a whole dream of life that might grow up beside this
help; of work that might be done there. She forgot that she was
lingering, and keeping Mr. Kirkbright lingering, behind the others.

"You would have to live here yourself, I should think," she said at
length, speaking out of her vision of the things that might be, and
so--would have to be. She had got drawn in to the contemplation of
the scheme, and had begun to weigh and arrange, involuntarily, its
details, forgetting that she "knew not anything."

Mr. Kirkbright smiled.

"Yes, I see where you are," he said, "I had arrived at precisely the
same point myself. But the 'right people at the other end?' Who
should they be? Who shall send me my villagers,--my workers? Who
shall discriminate for me, and keep things true and unconfused at
the source?"

"Your sister, Mr. Vireo, Luclarion Grapp," Desire repeated,
promptly.

"And yourself?"

"Yes; I and Hazel, all we can. We help them. And now there will be
Miss Argenter. As Hazel said,--'We all of us know the Muffin-man.'
How queer that that ridiculous play should come to mean so much with
us! Luclarion Grapp is actually a muffin-woman, you know?"

"I'm afraid I don't know the Muffin-_man_ literally, except what I
can guess of him by your application," said Mr. Kirkbright,
laughing. "I've no doubt I ought to, and that it would do me good."

"You will have to come to Greenley Street, and find him out. Hazel
and Miss Craydocke manage all the introductions, as having a kind of
proprietorship; 'and quite proper, I'm sure'--Why, where are Miss
Kirkbright and Miss Argenter?"

Coming back to light common speech, she came back also to the
present circumstance; reminded also, perhaps, by her "quite proper"
quotation.

"If I may come to Greenley Street, I may learn a good deal beside
the Muffin-man," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving her his hand to help
her up a steep, slippery place.

Desire foolishly blushed. She knew it, and knew that her hat did not
defend her in the least. She could not take it back now; she had
invited him. But what would he think of her blushing about it?

"You can learn what we all learn. I am only a scholar," she said,
shortly. And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of
having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothing to do
with it. She was conscious that she had colored like any silly girl,
at she hardly knew what. She was provoked with herself, for letting
the shadow of such things touch her. She hurried on, up the rough
bank, before Mr. Kirkbright. When she reached the top, she turned
round and faced him; this time with a determinedly cool cheek.

"I don't know why I said that. I did not suppose you thought you
could learn anything of me," she said. "I was confused to think I
had asked you in that offhand way to my house. I have not been very
long used to being the head of a house."

She smiled one of those bits of smiles of hers; a mere relaxation of
the lips that showed the white tips of her front teeth and just
indicated the peculiar, pretty curve with which the others were set
behind them; feeling reassured and reinstated in her own
self-respect by her explanation. Then, without letting him answer,
she turned swiftly round again, and sprang up the rugged stairway of
the shelving rock.

But she had not uninvited him, after all.

They found Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie waiting for them at the red
house. It was a quaint structure, with a kind of old, foreign look
about it. It made you think either of an ancient family mansion in
some provincial French town, or of a convent for nuns.

It was of dark red brick,--the quality of which Mr. Kirkbright
remarked with satisfaction,--with high walls at the gable ends
carried above the slope of the roof. These were met and overclasped
at the corners by wide, massive eaves. A high, narrow door with a
fan-light occupied the middle of the end before which the party
stood. Windows above, with little balconies, were hung with old red
woolen damask, fading out in stripes; perishing, doubtless, with
moth and decay; in one was suspended a rusty bird-cage which had
once been gilt.

What an honest neighborhood this was, in which these things had
remained for years, and not even the panes of the windows had been
broken by little boys! But then the villages full of little boys
were miles away, and the single families at the nearer farms were
well ordered Puritan folk, fathered and mothered in careful, old
fashioned sort. There was some indefinite awe, also, of the lonely
place, and of the rich, far-off owner who might come any day to look
after his rights, and make a reckoning with them.

Up, from platform to platform of the terraced rock, as Sylvie had
said, climbed the successive sections of the dwelling. The front was
two and a half stories high; the last outlying projection was a
single square apartment with its own low roof; towards the back,
within, you went up flight after flight of short stairs from room to
room, from passage to passage. Once or twice, the few broad steps
between two apartments ran the whole width of the same.

"What a place for plays!"

"Or for a little children's school, ranged in rows, one above
another."

"The man who built it must have dreamt it first!"

These were the exclamations that they made to each other as they
passed through, exploring.

There was a great number of bedrooms, divided off here and there;
the upper front was one row of them with a gallery running across
the house, in whose windows toward the south hung the old red woolen
draperies and the bird-cage.

Below, at the back, the last room opened by a door upon a high, flat
table of the rock, around whose overhanging edge a light railing had
been run. Standing here, they looked up and down the beautiful
gorge, into the heart of the hill and the depth of its secret shaded
places on the one hand, and on the other into the rush and whirl of
the rapidly descending and broken torrent to where it flung itself
off the sudden brink, and changed into white mist and an everlasting
song.

"This last room ought to be a chapel," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Out
here could be open-air service in the beautiful weather, to the
sound of that continual organ."

"You have thought of it, too," exclaimed Desire.

"Of what?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, turning toward her.

"Of what you might make this place."

"What would you make of it?"

They were a little apart, by themselves, again. It kept happening
so. Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie had a great deal to say to each
other.

"I would make it a moral sanatorium. I would take people in here,
and nurse them up by beautiful living, till they were ready to begin
the world again; and then I would have the little new world, of work
and business, waiting just outside. I would have rooms for them
here, that they should feel the _own-ness_ of; flowers to tend;
ferneries in the windows; they could make them from these beautiful
woods, and send them away to the cities; that would be a business at
the very first! I would have all the lovely, natural ways of living
to win them back by,--to teach them pure things; yes,--and I would
have the chapel to teach them the real gospel in! That bird-cage in
the gallery window made me think of it all, I believe," she ended,
bringing herself back out of her enthusiasm with a recollection.

"I knew you could tell me how," said Mr. Kirkbright, quietly.

"How Hazel would rejoice in this place! It is a place to set any one
dreaming, I think; because, perhaps, as Miss Kirkbright said, the
man was in a dream when he planned it."

"I mean to try if one dream cannot be lived," said Christopher
Kirkbright. "At any rate, let us have the _vision_ out, while we are
about it! What do you think of brickmaking for the hard, rough
working men, with families, with those cottages and more like them
to live in; and paper-making, in mills down there, for others; for
the women and children, especially. Paper for hangings, say; then,
some time or other, the printing works, and the designing? Might it
not all grow? And then wouldn't we have a ladder all the way up, for
them to climb by,--out of the clay and common toil to art and
beauty?"

"You can dream delightfully, Mr. Kirkbright."

"I will see if I cannot begin to turn it into fact, and make it
pay," he answered. "Pay itself, and keep itself going. I do not need
to look for my fortune from it. The fortune is to be put into it.
But I have no right to lose,--to throw away,--the fortune. It must
come by degrees, like all things. You know some people say that God
dreamed the heavens and the earth in those six wonderful days, and
then took his millions of years for the everlasting making, with the
Sabbath of his divine satisfaction between the two. If I cannot do
the whole, there may be others,--and if there are, we shall find
them,--who would help to build the city."

"I know who," said Desire, instantly. "Dakie Thayne, and Ruth! It is
just what they want."

"Will 'Dakie Thayne' build a railroad,--seven miles,--across to
Tillington,--for our transportation? We'll say he will. I have no
question it is Dakie Thayne, or somebody, who is waiting, and that
the right people are all linked together, ready to draw each other
in," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving rein to the very lightness of
gladness in the joy of the thought he was pursuing. "We don't know
how we stand leashed and looped, all over the world, until the Lord
begins to take us in hand, and bring us together toward his grand
intents. We shall want another Hilary Vireo to preach that gospel
here; and I don't doubt he is somewhere, though it would hardly seem
possible."

"Why don't we preach it ourselves?" said Desire, with inimitable
unwittingness. She was so utterly and wholly in the vision, that she
left her present self standing there on the rock with Christopher
Kirkbright, and never even thought of a reason why to blush before
him.

"I don't know why we shouldn't. In fact, we could not help it. It
would be _all_ gospel, wouldn't it? I know, at least, what I should
mean the whole thing to preach."

Saying this, he fell silent all at once.

"There is a great deal of wrong gospel preached in the world. If we
could only stop that, and begin again,--I think!" said Desire.
"Between the old, hopeless terrors and the modern smoothing away and
letting go, the real living help seems to have failed men. They
don't know where it is, or whether they need it, even."

"Yes, that is it," said Christopher Kirkbright, letting his silence
be broken through with the whole tide of his earnest, life-long,
pondered thought. "Men have put aside the old idea of the avenging
and punishing God, until they think they have no longer any need of
Christ. God is Love, they tell us; not recognizing that the Christ
_is_ that very Love of God. He will not cast us into hell, they say;
there _is_ no pit of burning torment. But they know there is
something that follows after sin; they know that God is not weak,
but abides by his own truth. Therefore, when they have made out God
to be Love, and blotted away the old, literal hell, they turn back
and declare pitilessly,--'There is _Law_. Law punishes; and Law is
inexorable. God Himself does not suspend or contradict his Law. You
have sinned; you must take the consequences.' Are you better off in
the clutch of that Law, than you were in the old hell? Isn't there
the same need as ever crying up from hearts of suffering men for a
Saviour? Of a side of God to be shown to them,--the forgiving side,
the restoring right hand? The power to grasp and curb his own law?
You must have Jesus again! You must have the Christ of God to help
you against the Law of God that you have put in the place of the
hell you will not believe in. Without a counteracting force, law
will run on forever. The impetus that sin started will bear on
downward, through the eternities! This is what threatens the sinner;
and you have sinned. Beyond and above and through the necessities
that He seems to have made, God reveals himself supreme in love, in
the Face of Jesus Christ. He comes in the very midst of the clouds,
with power and great glory! 'I have _provided_ a way,' He says,
'from the foundations,--for you to repent and for Me to take you
back. It was a part of my _plan_ to forgive. You have seen but half
the revolution of my wheel of Law. Fling yourself upon it; believe;
you shall be broken; but you shall _not_ be ground into powder. You
shall find yourselves lifted up into the eternal peace and safety;
you shall feel yourself folded in the arms of my tender compassion.
The bones that I have broken shall rejoice. Your life shall be set
right for you, notwithstanding the Law: yea, _by_ the law. _I have
provided_. Only believe.'

"This is the word,--the Christ,--on God's part This is repentance
and saving faith, on our part. It is the Gospel. And it came by the
mouth, and the interpreting and confirming acts, of Jesus. The
_power_ of the acts was little matter; the _expression_ of the acts
was everything. He proclaimed forgiveness,--He healed disease; He
reversed evil and turned it back. He changed death into
life,--taking away the sting--the implantation--of it, which is sin.
For evermore the might of the Redemption stands above the might of
the Law that was transgressed."

"You have dedicated your chapel, Mr. Kirkbright."

Desire Ledwith said it, with that emotion which makes the voice
sound restrained and deep; and as she said it, she turned to go back
into the house.




CHAPTER XIX.

BLOSSOMING FERNS.


The minister's covered carryall was borrowed from two miles off, to
take Mrs. Argenter down to Tillington.

All she knew about the winter plan was that Miss Ledwith was a
friend of Miss Kirkbright's, had a large, old-fashioned house, and
scarcely any household, and would be glad to have herself and Sylvie
take rooms with her for several months. She had a vague idea that
Miss Ledwith might be somewhat restricted in her means, and that to
receive lodgers in a friendly way would be an "object" to her. She
talked, indeed, with a gentle complaisance to Miss Kirkbright, about
its not being exactly what they had intended,--they had thought of
rooms at Hotel Pelham or Boylston, so central and so near the
Libraries; but after all, what she needed most was quiet and no
stairs; and she had a horror of elevators, and a dread of fire; so
that this was really better, perhaps; and Miss Ledwith was a very
sweet person.

Miss Euphrasia smiled; "sweet," especially in the silvery tone in
which Mrs. Argenter uttered it, was the last monosyllabic epithet
she would have selected as applying to grave, earnest, downright
Desire.

At East Keaton, the train stopped for five minutes.

Sylvie had begged Mr. Kirkbright beforehand to get her mother's
foot-warmer filled with hot water at the station, and he had just
returned with it. She was busily arranging it under Mrs. Argenter's
feet again, and wrapping the rug about her, kneeling beside her
chair to do so, when some one entered the drawing-room car in which
the party was, and came up behind her.

She thought she was in the way of some stranger, and hastily arose.

"I beg your pardon," she said, instinctively, and turned as she
spoke.

"What for?" asked Rodney Sherrett, holding out both hands, and
grasping hers before she was well aware.

There were morning stars in her eyes, and a beautiful sunrise
crimsoned her cheek. These two had not seen each other all summer.

Aunt Euphrasia looked from one face to the other.

"Not to say anything for two years!" she thought, recalling inwardly
her brother's wise injunction. "It says itself, though; and it was
made to!"

"How do you do, Mrs. Argenter? I hope you are feeling better for
your country summer? Aunt Effie! _You're_ not surprised to see me?
Did you think I would let you go down without?"

No; Aunt Effie, when she had written him that regular little Sunday
afternoon note from Brickfield, telling him that they were all to
come down on Tuesday, had thought no such thing. And she was at this
moment, with wise forethought, packed in behind all the others, in
the most inaccessible corner of the car.

"You're not going down to the city?"

But he was. Rodney's eyes sparkled as he told her.

"Your own doctrine exemplified. Things always happen, you say.
One of the mills is stopped for just this very day of all
others,--repairing machinery. I'm off work, for the first time in
four months. There has been no low water all summer. Regular header,
straight through. Don't you see I'm perfectly emaciated with the
confinement? I've breathed in wool-stuffing till I feel like a
pincushion."

"An emaciated wool-stuffed pincushion! Yes, I think you do look a
little like it!" Aunt Euphrasia talked nonsense just as he did,
because she was so pleased she could not help it.

They paired, naturally. Miss Kirkbright and Mrs. Argenter, facing
each other in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the
same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared
claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been
filled. Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the
opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and
tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a
House of Refuge.

"I will not have it called that, though. It shall not be stamped
with any stereotyped name. It shall not even be a Home,--except _my_
home; and I'll just take them in: I and Euphrasia."

There was nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie,
with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months
among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff.

Of all these four months there has been no chance to tell you
anything before as concerning him.

He had been at Arlesbury; learning to be a manufacturer; beginning
at the beginning with the belts and rollers, spindles, shuttles, and
harnesses; finding out the secrets of satinets and doeskins and
kerseys; _driving_, as he had wanted to do; taking hold of something
and making it go.

"It isn't exactly like trotting tandem," he told Sylvie, "but
there's a something living in it, too; a creature to bit and manage;
that's what I like about it. But I hate the oil, and the noise, and
the dust. Why, _this_ is pin-drop silence to it! I hope it won't
make me deaf,--and dumb! Father will feel bad if it does," he said,
with an indescribably pathetic demureness.

"Was it your father's plan?" asked Sylvie, laughing merrily.

"Well,--yes! At least I told him to take me and set me to work; or I
should pretty soon be good for nothing; and so he looked round in a
great fright and hurry, as you may imagine, and put me into the
first thing he could think of, and that was this. I'm to stay at it
for two years, before I--ask him for anything else. I think I shall
have a good right then, don't you? I'm thinking all the time about
my Three Wishes. I suppose I may wish three times when I begin? They
always do."

What could he talk but nonsense? Earnestness had been forbidden him;
he had to cover it up with the absurdity of a boy.

But what a blessing that it made no manner of difference! That in
all things of light and speech, the gracious law is that the flash
should go so much farther, as well as faster than the sound!

Something between them unspoken told the story that words, though
they be waited for, never tell half so well. She knew that she had
to do with his being in earnest. She knew that she had to do with
his being at play, this moment, laughing and joking the time away
beside her on this railroad trip. He had come to join Aunt
Euphrasia? Yes, indeed, and there sat Aunt Euphrasia in her corner,
reading the "Vicar's Daughter," and between times talking a little
with Mrs. Argenter. Not ten sentences did aunt and nephew exchange,
all the way from East Keaton down to Cambridge. When Mrs. Argenter
grew tired as the day wore on, and a sofa was vacated, Rodney helped
Sylvie to move the shawls and the foot-warmer, and the rug, and
improvise cushions, and make her mother comfortable; then, as Mrs.
Argenter fell asleep, they sat near her and chatted on.

And Aunt Euphrasia read her book, and considered herself escorted
and attended to, which is just such a convenience as a judicious and
amiably disposed female relative appreciates the opportunity for
making of herself.

Down somewhere in Middlesex, boys began to come into the cars with
great bunches of trailing ferns to sell; exquisite things that
people have just begun to find out and clamor for, and that so a
boy-supply has vigorously arisen to meet.

"O, how lovely!" cried Sylvie, at one stopping-place, where an
urchin stood with his arms full; the glossy, delicate leaves
wreathed round and round in long loops, and the feathery blossoms
dropping like mist-tips from among them. "And we're too exclusive
here, for him to be let in."

Of course the window would not open; drawing-room car windows never
do. Rodney rushed to the door; held up a dollar greenback.

"Boy! Here! toss up your load!"

The long train gave its first spasm and creak at starting; up came
the tangle of beauty; down fluttered the bit of paper to the
platform; and Rodney came in with the rare garlands and tassels
drooping all about him.

Everybody was delighted; Aunt Euphrasia dropped her book, and made
her way out of her corner; Desire and Mr. Kirkbright handled and
exclaimed; Mrs. Argenter opened her eyes, and held out her fingers
toward them with a smile.

"Such a quantity--for everybody!" said Sylvie, as he put them into
her lap, and she began to shake out the bunches. "How kind you were,
Mr. Sherrett! We've longed so to find some of these, haven't we
Amata? Has anybody got a newspaper, or two? We'd better keep them
all together till we get home." And she coiled the sprays carefully
round and round into a heap.

No matter if they should be all given away to the very last leaf;
she could thank innocently "for everybody"; but she knew very well
what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for.

In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns
again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and
significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into
her lap.

She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down
beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to
catch it. Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now. It was one of his
very, very own that he spent for her that day. A girl feels a
strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the
life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her.

It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it,
neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking,
were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October
afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true,
some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that
evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take
the night train up),--"Why shouldn't we have _this_ piece of our
lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed
off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it
just like this."

Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him
on his cheek, saying nothing.

But to herself she said, after he had gone,--

"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out
together. And there never _is_ any time like this time. How is
anybody sure of the rest of it?"

Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers.




CHAPTER XX.

"WANTED."


The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took
possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not
been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful
in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements,
into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's
sake.

She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and
if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire.
Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be
unbricked?

"I don't think you'll mind, with cannel coal," said Sylvie. "That is
so cheerful; and there won't be any smoke, for Miss Ledwith says the
draught is excellent."

"But it stands out, and takes up room; and people never keep the
carpet clean behind it!" said Mrs. Argenter.

"I'll take care of that," said Sylvie. "It is my business. We
couldn't have these rooms, you see, except just as I have agreed for
them; and you know I like making things nice myself in the morning."

Desire had delicately withdrawn by this time; and presently coming
back with a cup of tea upon a little tray, which refreshment she was
sure Mrs. Argenter would need at once after her journey, she found
the lady sitting quite serenely in the low cushioned chair before
the obnoxious grate, in which Sylvie had kindled the lump of cannel
that lay all ready for the match, in a folded newspaper, with three
little pitch-pine sticks.

There was something so dainty and compact about it, and the bright
blaze answered so speedily to the communicating touch, the black
layers falling away from each other in rich, bituminous flakiness,
and letting the fire-tongues through, that she looked on in the
happy complacence with which idle or disabled persons always enjoy
something that does itself, yet can be followed in the doing with a
certain passive sense of participancy.

In the same manner she watched Sylvie putting away wraps, unlocking
trunks, laying forth dressing-gowns and night-clothes, and setting
out toilet cases upon table and stand.

For the gray parlor contained now, for Mrs. Argenter's use, a
pretty, low, curtained French bed, and the other appliances of a
sleeping-room. A bedroom adjoining, which had been Mrs. Froke's, was
to be Sylvie's; and this had a further communication directly with
the kitchen, which would be just the thing for Sylvie's quiet
flittings to and fro in the fulfillment of her gladly undertaken
duties. All Mrs. Argenter knew about it was that she should be able
to have her hot water promptly in the mornings, without being
intruded upon.

Sylvie had insisted upon Desire's receiving the seven dollars a week
which she was still able to pay for her mother's board. Nobody had
told her of Miss Ledwith's very large wealth, and it would have made
no difference if she had known it, except the exciting in her of a
quick question why they had been taken in at all, and whether she
were not indeed being in her turn benevolently practised upon, as
she with much compunction practised upon her mother.

"I know very well that I could not earn, beyond my own board, more
than the difference between that and the ten dollars she would have
to pay anywhere else," she said, simply. And Miss Kirkbright as
simply told Desire, privately, to let it be so.

"If you don't need the pay, she needs the payment," she said.

Desire quietly put it all aside, as she received it. "Sometime or
other I shall be able to tell her all about it, and make her take it
back," she said. "When she has come to understand, she will know
that it is no more mine than hers; and if I do not keep it I can see
very well it will all go after the rest, for whatever whims she can
possibly gratify her mother in."

There began to be happy times for Sylvie now, in Frendely's kitchen,
in Desire's library; all over the house, wherever there was any
little care to take, any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not
miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie
was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to
play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for
her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess
in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,--work for
Neighbor Street it was, mostly,--into the gray parlor, and "sewed
for two," on the principle of the fire-watching, that something busy
might be going on in the room, and Mrs. Argenter might have the
content of seeing it.

On the Wednesday evenings recurred the delightful "Read-and-Talk,"
when the Ingrahams came, and Bel Bree, and a dozen or so more of the
"other girls"; when on the big table treasures of picture, map,
stereoscope and story were brought forth; when they traversed far
countries, studied in art-galleries and frescoed churches, traced
back old historic associations; did not hurry or rush, but stayed in
place after place, at point after point, looking it all thoroughly
up, enjoying it like people who could take the world in the leisure
of years. And as they did not have the actual miles to go over, the
standing about to do, and the fatigues to sleep between, they could
"work in the ground fast," like Hamlet, or any other spirit. Their
hours stood for months; their two months had given them already
winters and summers of enchantment.

Hazel Ripwinkley, and very often Ada Geoffrey, was here at these
travelling parties. Ada had all her mother's resources of books,
engravings, models, specimens, at her command; she would come with a
carriage-full. Sometimes the library was Rome for an evening, with
its Sistine Raphaels, its curious relics and ornaments, its Coliseum
and St. Peter's in alabaster, its views of tombs, and baths, and
temples. Sometimes it was Venice; again it was transformed into a
dream of Switzerland, and again, there were the pyramids, the
obelisks, the sphinxes, the giant walls and gateways of Egypt, with
a Nile boat, and lotus flowers, and papyrus reeds, in reality or
fac-simile,--even a mummied finger and a scaraboeus ring.

They were not restricted, even, to a regular route, when their
subject took them out of it. They could have a glimpse of Memphis,
or Babylon, or Alexandria, or Athens, by way of following out an
allusion or synchronism.

Hazel and Ada almost came to the conclusion that this was the
perfection of travelling, and the supersedure of all literal and
laborious sightseeing; and Sylvie Argenter ventured the Nipperism
that "tea and coffee and spices might or might not be a little
different right off the bush, but if shiploads were coming in to you
all the time, you might combine things with as much comfort on the
whole, perhaps, as you would have in sailing round for every
separate pinch to Ceylon, and Java, and Canton."

The leaf had got turned between Leicester Place and Pilgrim Street.
I suppose you knew it would as well as I.

Bel Bree had met Dorothy first in silk-and-button errands for her
Aunt Blin's "finishings," at the thread-store where Dot tended.
(Such machine-sewing as they could obtain, Ray had done at home,
since they came into the city; and Dot had taken this place at Brade
and Matchett's.) Then they came across each other in their waitings
at the Public Library, and so found out their near neighborhood. At
last, growing intimate, Dorothy had introduced Bel to the Chapel
Bible class, and thence brought her into Desire's especial little
club at her own house.

After the travel-talk was over,--and they began with it early, so
that all might reach home at a safe hour in the evening,--very often
some one or two would linger a few moments for some little talk of
confidence or advice with Desire. These girls brought their plans to
her; their disappointments, their difficulties, their suggestions;
not one would make a change, or take any new action, without telling
her. They knew she cared for them. It was the beginning of all
religion that she taught them in this faith, this friendliness.
Every soul wants some one to come to; it is easy to pass from the
experience of human sympathy to the thought of the Divine; without
it the Divine has never been revealed.

One bright night in this October, Dot Ingraham waited, letting her
sister walk on with Frank Sunderline, who had called for them, and
asking Bel Bree to stop a minute and go with her. "We'll take the
car, presently," she said to Ray. "We shall be at home almost as
soon as you will."

"It is about the shop work," she said to Desire, who stepped back
into the library with her.

"I do not think I can do it much longer. I am pretty strong for some
things, but this terrible _standing_! I could _walk_ all day; but
cramped up behind those counters, and then reaching up and down the
boxes and things,--I feel sometimes when I get through at night, as
if my bones had all been racked. I haven't told them at home, for
fear they would worry about me; they think now I've lost flesh, and
I suppose I have; and I don't have much appetite; it seems dragged
out of me. And then,--I can't say it before the others, for they're
in shops, some of 'em, and places may be different; but it's such a
window and counter parade, besides; and they do look out for it.
People stare in at the store as they go by; Margaret Shoey has the
glove counter at that end, and she knows Mr. Matchett keeps her
there on purpose to attract; she sets herself up and takes airs upon
it; and Sarah Cilley does everything she sees her do, and comes in
for the second-hand attention. Mr. Matchett asked me the other day
if I couldn't wear a panier, and do up my hair a little more
stylish! I can't stay there; it isn't fit for girls!"

Dot's cheeks flamed, and there were tears in her eyes. Desire
Ledwith stood with a thoughtful, troubled expression in her own.

"There ought to be other ways," she said. "There ought to be more
_sheltered_ work for girls!"

"There is," said little Bel Bree from the doorway "in houses. If I
hadn't Aunt Blin, I'd go right into a family as seamstress or
anything. I don't believe in out-doors and shops. I've only lived in
the city a little while, but I've seen it. And just think of the
streets and streets of nice houses, where people live, and girls
have to live with 'em, to do real woman's home work! And it's all
given up to foreign servants, and _our_ girls go adrift, and live
anyhow. 'Tain't right!"

"There is a good deal that isn't right about it," said Desire,
gravely; knowing better than Bel the difficulties in the way of new
domestic ideas. "And a part of it is that the houses aren't built,
or the ways of living planned, for 'our girls,' exactly. Our girls
aren't happy in underground kitchens and sky bedrooms."

"I don't know. They might as well be underground as in some of those
close, crowded shops. And their bedrooms can't be much to compare,
certain. I'm afraid they like the crowds best. If they wanted to,
and would work in, and try, they might contrive. Things fix
themselves accordingly, after a while. Somebody's got to begin. I
can't help thinking about it."

Desire smiled.

"Your thinking may be a first sign of good times, little Bel," she
said. "Think on. That is the way everything begins; with a
restlessness in some one or two heads about it. Perhaps that is just
what you have come down from New Hampshire for."

"I don't know," said Bel again. She began a good many of her
reflective, suggestive little speeches with that hesitating feeler
into the fog of social perplexity she essayed. "They're just as bad
up there, now. They all get away to the towns, and the trades, and
the stores They won't go into the houses; and they might have such
good places!"

"You came yourself, you see?"

"Yes. I wasn't contented. And things were particular with me. And I
had Aunt Blin. I don't want to go back, either. But I can see how it
is."

"Things are particular with each one, in some sort or another. That
is what settles it, I suppose, and ought to. The only thing is to be
sure that it is a _right_ particular that does it; that we don't let
in any wrong particular, anywhere. For you, Dorothy, I don't believe
shop-life is the thing. You have found it out. Why not change at
once? There is the machine at home, and Ray is going to be busy in
Neighbor Street. Won't her work naturally come to you?"

"There isn't much of it, and it is so uncertain. The shops take up
all the bulk of work nowadays; everything is wholesale; and I don't
want to go into the rooms, if I can help it. I don't like days'
work, either. The fact is, I want a quiet place, and the same
things. I like my own machine. I would go with it into a family, if
I could have my own room, and be nice, and not have to eat with
careless, common servants in a dirty kitchen. Mother would spare
me,--to a real good situation; and I would come home Sundays."

"I see. What you want is somewhere, of course. Wouldn't you
advertise?"

"Would _you_?"

"Yes, I think I would. Say exactly what you want, wages and all. And
put it into some family Sunday paper,--the 'Christian Register,' for
instance. Those things get read over and over; and the same paper
lies about a week. In the dailies, one thing crowds out another; a
new list every night and morning. See here, I'll write one now.
Perhaps it wouldn't be too late for this week. Would you go out of
town?"

"_Wouldn't_ I? I think sometimes that's just what ails me; wanting
to see soft roads and green grass and door-yards and sun between the
houses! But I couldn't go far, of course."

Desire's pencil was flying over the paper.

"'Wanted; a permanent situation in a pleasant family, as seamstress,
by a young girl used to all kinds of sewing, who will bring her own
machine. Would like a room to herself, and to have her meals
orderly and comfortable, whether with the family or otherwise.
Wages'--What?"

"By the day, I could get a dollar and a quarter, at least; but for a
real good home-place, I'd go for four dollars a week."

"'Wages, $4.00 per week. A little way out of town preferred.' There!
There are such places, and why shouldn't one come to you? Take that
down to the 'Register' office to-morrow morning, and have it put in
twice, unless stopped."

"Thank you. It's all easy enough, Miss Ledwith. Why didn't I work it
out myself?"

"It isn't quite worked out, yet. But things always look clearer,
somehow, through two pairs of eyes. Good-night. Let me know what you
hear about it."

"She'll surprise some family with such a seamstress as they read
about," said Bel Bree, on the door-step. "I should like to astonish
people, sometime, with a heavenly kind of general housework."

"That was a good idea of yours about the Sunday paper," said Sylvie,
as she and Hazel and Desire went back into the library to put away
the books. "But what when the common sort pick up the dodge, and
the weeklies get full of 'Wanteds'? Nothing holds out fresh, very
long."

"There _ought_ to be," said Desire, "some filtered process for these
things; some way of sifting and certifying. A bureau of mutual
understanding between the 'real folks,'--employers and employed. I
believe it might be. There ought to be for this, and for many
things, a fellowship organized, between women of different outward
degree. And something will happen, sooner or later, to bring it
about. A money crisis, perhaps, to throw these girls out of
shop-employment, and to make heads of households look into ways of
more careful managing. A mutual need,--or the seeing of it. The need
is now; these girls--half of them--want homes, more than anything;
and the homes are suffering for the help of just such girls."

"Why don't you edit a paper, Desire? The 'Fellowship Register,' or
the 'Domestic Intelligencer,' or something! And keep lists of all
the nice, real housekeepers, and the nice, real, willing girls?"

"That isn't a bad notion, Hazie. Your notions never are. May be that
is what is waiting for you. Just cover up that 'raised Switzerland,'
will you, and bring it over here? And roll up the 'Course of the
Rhine,' and set it in the corner. There; now we may put out the gas.
Sylvie, has your mother had her fresh camomile tea?"

The three girls bade each other good-night at the stairs; just where
Desire had stood once, and put her arms about Uncle Titus's neck for
the first time. She often thought of it now, when they went up after
the pleasant evenings, and came down in the bright mornings to their
cheery breakfasts. She liked to stop on just that step. Nobody knew
all it meant to her, when she did. There are places in every
dwelling that keep such secrets for one heart and memory alone.

Yes, indeed. Sylvie was very happy now. All her pretty pictures, and
little brackets, and her mother's stands and vases in the gray
parlor, were hung with the lovely, wreathing, fairy stems of
star-leaved, blossomy fern; and the sweet, dry scent was a perpetual
subtle message. That day in the train from East Keaton was a day to
pervade the winter, as this woodland breath pervaded the old city
house. Sylvie could wait with what she had, sure that, sometime,
more was coming. She could wait better than Rodney. Because,--she
knew she was waiting, and satisfied to wait. How did Rodney know
that?

It was what he kept asking his Aunt Euphrasia in his frequent,
boyish, yet most manly, letters. And she kept answering, "You need
not fear. I think I understand Sylvie. I can see. If there were
anything in the way, I would tell you."

But at last she had to say,--not, "I think I understand
Sylvie,"--but, "I understand girls, Rodney. I am a woman, remember.
I have been a girl, and I have waited. I have waited all my life.
The right girls can."

And Rodney said, tossing up the letter with a shout, and catching it
with a loving grasp between his hands again,--

"Good for you, you dear, brave, blessed ace of hearts in a world
where hearts are trumps! If you ain't one of the right old girls,
then they don't make 'em, and never did!"




CHAPTER XXI.

VOICES AND VISIONS.


Madame Bylles herself walked into the great work-room of Mesdames
Fillmer & Bylles, one Saturday morning.

Madame Bylles was a lady of great girth and presence. If Miss Tonker
were sub-aristocratic, Madame Bylles was almost super-aristocratic,
so cumulative had been the effect upon her style and manner of
constant professional contact with the élite. Carriages had rolled
up to her door, until she had got the roll of them into her very
voice. Airs and graces had swept in and out of her private
audience-room, that had not been able to take all of themselves away
again. As the very dust grows golden and precious where certain
workmanship is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those
who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her
apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a
sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated
became--not the air of shop or business or down-town street--but the
air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon Hill or the New Land.

And Madame Bylles breathed it all the time; she dwelt in the courtly
contagion. When she came in among her work-people, it was an advent
of awe. It was as if all the elegance that had ever been made up
there came floating and spreading and shining in, on one portly and
magnificent person.

But when Madame Bylles came in, in one of her majestic hurries!
Then it was as if the globe itself had orders to move on a little
faster, and make out the year in two hundred and eighty days or so,
and she was appointed to see it done.

She was in one of these grand and grave accelerations this morning.
Miss Pashaw's marriage was fixed for a fortnight earlier than had
been intended, business calling Mr. Soldane abroad. There were
dresses to be hurried; work for over-hours was to be given out. Miss
Tonker was to use every exertion; temporary hands, if reliable,
might be employed. All must be ready by Thursday next; Madame Bylles
had given her word for it.

The manner in which she loftily transmitted this grand intelligence,
warm from the high-born lips that had favored her with the
confidence,--the air of intending it for Miss Tonker's secondarily
distinguished ear alone, while the carriage-roll in her accents bore
it to the farthest corner in the room, where the meekest little
woman sat basting,--these things are indescribable. But they are in
human nature: you can call them up and scrutinize them for yourself.

Madame Bylles receded like a tidal wave, having heaved up, and
changed, and overwhelmed all things.

A great buzz succeeded her departure; Miss Tonker followed her out
upon the landing.

"I'll speak for that cashmere peignoir that is just cut out. I'll
make it nights, and earn me an ostrich band for my hat," said Elise
Mokey.

One spoke for one thing; one another; they were claimed beforehand,
in this fashion, by a kind of work-women's code; as publishers
advertise foreign books in press, and keep the first right by
courtesy.

Miss Proddle stopped her machine at last, and caught the news in her
slow fashion hind side before.

"We might some of us have overwork, I should think; shouldn't you?"
she asked, blandly, of Miss Bree.

Aunt Blin smiled. "They've been squabbling over it these five
minutes," she replied.

Aunt Blin was sure of some particular finishing, that none could do
like her precise old self.

Kate Sencerbox jumped up impatiently, reaching over for some fringe.

"I shall have to give it up," she whispered emphatically into Bel
Bree's ear. "It's no use your asking me to go to Chapel any more. I
ain't sanctified a grain. I did begin to think there was a kind of
work of grace begun in me,--but I _can't_ stand Miss Proddle! What
_are_ people made to strike ten for, always, when it's eleven?"

"I think _we_ are all striking _twelve_" said Bel Bree. "One's too
fast, and another's too slow, but the sun goes round exactly the
same."

Miss Tonker came back, and the talk hushed.

"Clock struck one, and down they run, hickory, dickory, dock," said
Miss Proddle, deliberately, so that her voice brought up the
subsiding rear of sound and was heard alone.

"What _under_ the sun?" exclaimed Miss Tonker, with a gaze of
mingled amazement, mystification, and contempt, at the poor old
maiden making such unwonted noise.

"Yes'm," said Kate Sencerbox. "It is 'under the sun,' that we're
talking about; the way things turn round, and clocks strike; some
too fast, and some too slow; and--whether there's anything new under
the sun. I think there is; Miss Proddle made a bright speech, that's
all."

Miss Tonker, utterly bewildered, took refuge in solemn and
supercilious disregard; as if she saw the joke, and considered it
quite beneath remark.

"You will please resume your work, and remember the rules," she
said, and sailed down upon the cutters' table.

There was a certain silk evening dress, of singular and
indescribably lovely tint,--a tea-rose pink; just the color of the
blush and creaminess that mingle themselves into such delicious
anonymousness in the exquisite flower. It was all puffed and fluted
till it looked as if it had really blossomed with uncounted curving
petals, that showed in their tender convolutions each possible
deepening and brightening of its wonderful hue.

It _looked_ fragrant. It conveyed a subtle sense of flavor. It fed
and provoked every perceptive sense.

It was not a dress to be hurried with; every quill and gather of its
trimming must be "set just so;" and there was still one flounce to
be made, and these others were only basted, as also the corsage.

After the hours were up that afternoon, Miss Tonker called Aunt Blin
aside. She uncovered the large white box in which it lay,
unfinished.

"You have a nice room, Miss Bree. Can you take this home and finish
it,--by Wednesday? In over-hours, I mean; I shall want you here
daytimes, as usual. It has been tried on; all but for the hanging of
the skirt; you can take the measures from the white one. _That_ I
shall finish myself."

Aunt Blin's voice trembled with humble ecstasy as she answered. She
thanked Miss Tonker in a tone timid with an apprehension of some
possible unacceptableness which should disturb or change the
favoring grace.

"Certainly, ma'am. I'll spread a sheet on the floor, and put a
white cloth on the table. Thank you, ma'am. Yes; I have a nice room,
and nothing gets meddled with. It'll be quite safe there. I'm sure
I'm no less than happy to be allowed. You're very kind, ma'am."

Miss Tonker said nothing at all to the meekly nervous outpouring.
She did not snub her, however; that was something.

Miss Bree and her niece, between them, carried home the large box.

On the way, a dream ran through the head of Bel. She could not help
it.

To have this beautiful dress in the house,--perhaps to have to stand
up and be tried to, for the fall of its delicate, rosy trail; with
the white cloth on the floor, and the bright light all through the
room,--why it would be almost like a minute of a ball; and what if
the door should be open, and somebody should happen to go by,
up-stairs? If she could be so, and be seen so, just one minute, in
that blush-colored silk! She should like to look like that, just
once, to somebody!

Ah, little Bel! behind all her cosy, practical living--all her busy
work and contentedness--all her bright notions of what might be
possible, for the better, in things that concerned her class,--she
had her little, vague, bewildering flashes of vision, in which she
saw impossible things; things that might happen in a book, things
that must be so beautiful if they ever did really happen!

A step went up and down the stairs and along the passage by her
aunt's room, day by day, that she had learned to notice every time
it came. A face had glanced in upon her now and then, when the door
stood open for coolness in the warm September weather, when they
had been obliged to have a fire to make the tea, or to heat an iron
to press out seams in work that they were doing. One or two days of
each week, they had taken work home. On those days, they did,
perhaps, their own little washing or ironing, besides; sewing
between whiles, and taking turns, and continuing at their needles
far on into the night. Once Mr. Hewland had come in, to help Aunt
Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she
was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other.
After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them. He had
opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back,
courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass.

Aunt Blin,--dear old simple, kindly-hearted Aunt Blin, who believed
cats and birds,--_her_ cat and bird, at least,--might be thrown
trustfully into each other's company, if only she impressed it
sufficiently upon the quadruped's mind from the beginning, that the
bird was "very, _very_ precious,"--thought Mr. Hewland was "such a
nice young man."

And so he was. A nice, genial, well-meaning, well-bred gentleman;
above anything ignoble, or consciously culpable, or common. His
danger lay in his higher tendencies. He had artistic tastes; he was
a lover of all grace and natural sweetness; no line of beauty could
escape him. More than that, he drew toward all that was most
genuine; he cared nothing for the elegant artificialities among
which his social position placed him. He had been singularly
attracted by this little New Hampshire girl, fresh and pretty as a
wild rose, and full of bright, quaint ways and speech, of which he
had caught glimpses and fragments in their near neighborhood. Now
and then, from her open window up to his had come her gay, sweet
laugh; or her raised, gleeful tone, as she said some funny, quick,
shrewd thing in her original fashion to her aunt.

Through the month of August, while work was slack, and the Hewland
family was away travelling, and other lodgers' rooms were vacated,
the Brees had been more at home, and Morris Hewland had been more in
his rooms above, than had been usual at most times. The music
mistress had taken a vacation, and gone into the country; only old
Mr. Sparrow, lame with one weak ankle, hopped up and down; and the
spare, odd-faced landlady glided about the passages with her prim
profile always in the same pose, reminding one of a badly-made
rag-doll, of which the nose, chin, and chest are in one invincible
flat line, interrupted feebly by an unsuccessful hint of drawing in
at the throat.

Mr. Hewland liked June for his travels; and July and August, when
everybody was out of the way, for his quiet summer work.

The Hewlands called him odd, and let him go; he stayed at home
sometimes, and he happened in and out, they knew where to find him,
and there was "no harm in Morris but his artistic peculiarities."

He had secured in these out-of-the way-lodgings in Leicester Place,
one of the best north lights that could be had in the city; he would
not take a room among a lot of others in a Studio Building. So he
worked up his studies, painted his pictures, let nobody come near
him except as he chose to bring them, and when he wanted anything of
the world, went out into the world and got it.

Now, something had come right in here close to him, which brought
him a certain sense of such a world as he could not go out into at
will, to get what he wanted. A world of simplicities, of blessed
contents, of unworn, joyous impulses, of little new, unceasing
spontaneities; a world that he looked into, as we used to do at
Sattler's Cosmoramas, through the merest peepholes, and comprehended
by the merest hints; but which the presence of this girl under the
roof with himself as surely revealed to him as the wind-flower
reveals the spring.

On her part, Bel Bree got a glimpse, she knew not how, of a world
above and beyond her own; a world of beauty, of power, of reach and
elevation, in which people like Morris Hewland dwelt. His step, his
voice, his words now and then to the friend or two whom he had the
habit of bringing in with him,--the mere knowledge that he "made
pictures," such pictures as she looked at in the windows and in
art-dealers' rooms, where any shop-girl, as freely as the most
elegant connoisseur, can go in and delight her eyes, and inform her
perceptions,--these, without the face even, which had turned its
magnetism straight upon hers only once or twice, and whose
revelation was that of a life related to things wide and full and
manifold,--gave her the stimulating sense of a something to which
she had not come, but to which she felt a strange belonging.

Beside,--alongside--in each mind, was the undeveloped mystery; the
spell under which a man receives such intuitions through a woman's
presence,--a woman through a man's. Yet these two individuals were
not, therefore, going to be necessary to each other, in the plan of
God. Other things might show that they were not meant, in rightness,
for each other; they represented mutually, something that each life
missed; but the something was in no special companionship; it was a
great deal wider and higher than that. They might have to learn that
it was so, nevertheless, by some briefly painful process of
experience. If in this process they should fall into mistake and
wrong,--ah, there would come the experience beyond the experience,
the depth they were not meant to sound, yet which, if they let their
game of life run that way, they could not get back from but through
the uttermost. They must play it out; the move could not be taken
back,--yet awhile. The possible better combinations are in God's
knowledge; how He may ever reset the pieces and give his good
chances again, remains the hidden hope, resting upon the Christ that
is in the heart of Him.

One morning Morris Hewland had come up the stairs with a handful of
tuberoses; he was living at home, then, through the pleasant
September, at his father's country place, whence the household would
soon remove to the city for the winter.

Miss Bree's door was open. She was just replacing her door-mat,
which she had been shaking out of the entry window. She had an old
green veil tied down over her head to keep the dust off; nobody
could suspect any harm of a wish or a willingness to have a word
with her; Morris Hewland could not have suspected it of himself, if
he had indeed got so far as to investigate his passing impulses.
There was something pitiful in the contrast, perhaps, of the pure,
fresh, exquisite blossoms, and the breath of sweet air he and they
brought with them in their swift transit from the places where it
blessed all things to the places where so much languished in the
need of it, not knowing, even, the privation. The old, trodden,
half-cleansed door-mat in her hands,--the just-created beauty in
his. He stopped, and divided his handful.

"Here, Miss Bree,--you would like a piece of the country, I imagine,
this morning! I couldn't have come in without it."

The voice rang blithe and bright into the room where Bel sat,
basting machine work; the eyes went after the voice.

The light from the east window was full upon the shining hair, the
young, unworn outlines, the fresh, pure color of the skin. Few city
beauties could bear such morning light as that. Nothing but the
morning in the face can meet it.

Morris Hewland lifted his hat, and bowed toward the young girl,
silently. Then he passed on, up to his room. Bel heard his step,
back and forth, overhead.

The tuberoses were put into a clear, plain tumbler. Bel would not
have them in the broken vase; she would not have them in a _blue_
vase, at all. She laid a white napkin over the red of the
tablecloth, and set them on it. The perfume rose from them and
spread all through the room.

"I am so glad we have work at home to-day," said Bel.

There had been nothing but little things like these; out into Bel's
head, as she and Aunt Blin carried home the tea-blush silk, and laid
it by with care in its white box upon the sofa-end, came that little
wish, with a spring and a heart-beat,--"If she might have it on for
a minute, and if in that minute he might happen to come by!"

She did not think she was planning for it; but when on the Tuesday
evening the step went down the stairs at eight o'clock, while they
sat busily working, each at a sleeve, by the drop-light over the
white-covered table, a little involuntary calculation ran through
her thoughts.

"He always comes back by eleven. We shall have two hours' work--or
more,--on this, if we don't hurry; and it's miserable to hurry!"

They stitched on, comfortably enough; yet the sleeves were finished
sooner than she expected. Before nine o'clock, Aunt Blin was sewing
them in. Then Bel wanted a drink of water; then they could not both
get at the waist together; there was no need.

"I'll do it," said Bel, out of her conscience, with a jump of fright
as she said it, lest Aunt Blin should take her at her word, and
begin gauging and plaiting the skirt.

"No, you rest. I shall want you by and by, for a figure."

"May I have it _all_ on?" says Bel eagerly. "Do, Auntie! I should
just like to be in such a dress once--a minute!"

"I don't see any reason why not. _You_ couldn't do any hurt to it,
if 'twas made for a queen," responded Aunt Blin.

"I'll do up my hair on the top of my head," said Bel.

And forthwith, at the far end of the room, away from the delicate
robe and its scattered material, she got out her combs and brushes,
and let down her gleaming brown hair.

It took different shades, from umber to almost golden, this "funny
hair" of hers, as she called it. She thought it was because she had
faded it, playing out in the sun when she was a child; but it was
more like having got the shine into it. It did not curl, or wave;
but it grew in lovely arches, with roots even set, around her
temple and in the curves of her neck; and now, as she combed it up
in a long, beautiful mass, over her grasping hand, raising it with
each sweep higher toward the crown of her pretty head, all this
vigorous, beautiful growth showed itself, and marked with its
shadowy outline the dainty shapings. One twist at the top for the
comb to go in, and then she parted it in two, and coiled it like a
golden-bronze cable; and laid it round and round till the foremost
turn rested like a wreath midway about her head. She pulled three
fresh geranium leaves and a pink-white umbel of blossom from the
plant in the window, and tucked the cluster among the soft front
locks against the coil above the temple.

Then she took off the loose wrapping-sack she had thrown over her
shoulders, washed her fingers at the basin, and came back to her
seat under the lamp.

Aunt Blin looked up at her and smiled. It was like having it all
herself,--this youth and beauty,--to have it belonging to her, and
showing its charming ways and phases, in little Bel. Why shouldn't
the child, with her fair, sweet freshness, and the deep-green,
velvety leaves making her look already like a rose against which
they leaned themselves, have on this delicate rose dress? If things
stayed, or came, where they belonged, to whom should it more
fittingly fall to wear it than to her?

Bel watched the clock and Aunt Blin's fingers.

It was ten when the plaits and gathers were laid, and the skirt
basted to its band for the trying. Bel was dilatory one minute, and
in a hurry the next.

"It would be done too soon; but he might come in early; and, O dear,
they hadn't thought,--there was that puffing to put round the
corsage, bertha-wise, with the blonde edging. 'It was all ready;
give it to her.'"

"Now!"

The wonderful, glistening, aurora-like robe goes over her head; she
stands in the midst, with the tender glowing color sweeping out from
her upon the white sheet pinned down above the carpet.

Was that anybody coming?

Aunt Blin left her for an instant to put up the window-top that had
been open to cool the lighted and heated room. Bel might catch cold,
standing like this.

"O, it is _so_ warm, Auntie! We can't have everything shut up!" And
with this swift excuse instantly suggesting itself and making
justification to her deceitful little heart that lay in wait for it,
Bel sprang to the opposite corner where the doorway opened full
toward her, diagonally commanding the room. She set it hastily just
a hand's length ajar. "There is no wind in the entry, and nobody
will come," she said.

When she was only excitedly afraid there wouldn't! I cannot justify
little Bel. I do not try to.

"Now, see! isn't it beautiful?"

"It sags just a crumb, here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and
stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You
shouldn't have sprung so, child."

The bare neck and the dimpled arms showed from among the cream-pink
tints like the high white lights upon the rose. Bel had not looked
in the glass yet: Aunt Blin was busy, and she really had not thought
of it; she was happy just in being in that beautiful raiment--in the
heart of its color and shine; feeling its softly rustling length
float away from her, and reach out radiantly behind. What is there
about that sweeping and trailing that all women like, and that
becomes them so? That even the little child pins a shawl about her
waist and walks to and fro, looking over her shoulder, to get a
sensation of?

The door _did_ shut, below. A step did come up the stairs, with a
few light springs.

Suddenly Bel was ashamed!

She did not want it, now that it had come! She had set a dreadful
trap for herself!

"O, Aunt Blin, let me go! Put something over me!" she whispered.

But Aunt Blin was down on the floor, far behind her, drawing out and
arranging the slope of the train, measuring from hem to band with
her professional eye.

The footstep suddenly checked; then, as if with an as swift
bethinking, it went by. But through that door ajar, in that bright
light that revealed the room, Morris Hewland had been smitten with
the vision; had seen little Bel Bree in all the possible flush of
fair array, and marvelous blossom of consummate, adorned loveliness.

Somehow, it broke down the safeguard he had had.

In what was Bel Bree different, really, from women who wore such
robes as that, with whom he had danced and chatted in drawing-rooms?
Only in being a thousand times fresher and prettier.

After that, he began to make reasons for speaking to them. He
brought Aunt Blin a lot of illustrated papers; he lent them a
stereoscope, with Alpine and Italian views; he brought down a
picture of his own, one day, to show them; before October was out,
he had spent an evening in Aunt Blin's room, reading aloud to them
"Mirèio."

Among the strange metaphysical doublings which human nature
discovers in itself, there is such a fact, not seldom experienced,
as the dreaming of a dream.

It is one thing to dream utterly, so that one believes one is
awake; it is another to sleep in one's dream, and in a vision give
way to vision. It is done in sleep, it is done also in life.

This was what Bel Bree--and it is with her side of the experience
that I have business--was in danger now of doing.

It is done in life, as to many forms of living--as to religion, as
to art. People are religious, not infrequently because they are in
love with the idea of being so, not because they are simply and
directly devoted to God. They are æsthetic, because "The Beautiful"
is so beautiful, to see and to talk of, and they choose to affect
artistic having and doing; but they have not come even into that
sheepfold by the door, by the honest, inevitable pathway that their
nature took because it must,--by the entrance that it found through
a force of celestial urging and guidance that was behind them all
the while, though they but half knew it or understood.

Women fall in love that way, so often! It is a lovely thing to be
loved; there is new living, which seems to them rare and grand, into
which it offers to lift them up. They fall into a dream about a
dream; they do not lay them down to sleep and give the Lord their
souls to keep, till He shall touch their trustful rest with a divine
fire, and waken them into his apocalypse.

It was this atmosphere in which Morris Hewland lived, and which he
brought about him to transfuse the heavier air of her lowly living,
that bewildered Bel. And she knew that she was bewildered. She knew
that it was the poetic side of her nature that was stirred, excited;
not the real deep, woman's heart of her that found, suddenly, its
satisfying. If women will look, they can see this.

She knew--she had found out--that she was a fair picture in the
artist's eyes; that the perception keen to discover and test and
analyze all harmonies of form and tint,--holding a hallowed,
mysterious kinship in this power to the Power that had made and
spoken by them,--turned its search upon her, and found her lovely in
the study. It was as if a daisy bearing the pure message and meaning
of the heavenly, could thrill with the consciousness of its
transmission; could feel the exaltation of fulfilling to a human
soul, grand in its far up mystery and waiting upon God,--one of his
dear ideas.

There was something holy in the spirit with which she thus realized
her possession of maidenly beauty; her gift of mental charm and
fitness even; it was the countersign by which she entered into this
realm of which Morris Hewland had the freedom; it belonged to her
also,--she to it; she had received her first recognition. It was a
look back into Paradise for this Eve's daughter, born to labor, but
with a reminiscence in her nature out of which she had built all her
sweetest notions of being, doing, abiding; from which came
the-home-picture, so simple in its outlines, but so rich and gentle
in all its significance, that she had drawn to herself as "her
wish"; the thing she would give most, and do most, to have come
true.

But all this was not necessarily love, even in its beginning,--though
she might come for a while to fancy it so,--for this one
man. It was a thing between her own life and the Maker of it; an
unfolding of herself toward that which waited for her in Him, and
which she should surely come to, whatever she might grasp at
mistakenly and miss upon the way.

Morris Hewland--young, honest-hearted, but full of a young man's
fire and impulse, of an artist's susceptibility to outward beauty,
of the ready delight of educated taste in fresh, natural, responsive
cleverness--was treading dangerous ground.

He, too, knew that he was bewildered; and that if he opened his eyes
he should see no way out of it. Therefore he shut his eyes and
drifted on.

Aunt Blin, with her simplicity,--her incapacity of believing, though
there might be wrong and mischief in the world, that anybody she
knew could ever do it, sat there between them, the most bewildered,
the most inwardly and utterly befooled of the three.




CHAPTER XXII.

BOX FIFTY-TWO.


In the midst of it all, she went and caught a horrible cold.

Aunt Blin, I mean.

It was all by wearing her india-rubbers a week too long, a week
after she had found the heels were split; and in that week there
came a heavy rain-storm.

She had to stay at home now. Bel went to the rooms and brought back
button-holes for her to make. She could not do much; she was
feverish and languid, and her eyes suffered. But she liked to see
something in the basket; she was always going to be "well enough
to-morrow." When the work had to be returned, Bel hurried, and did
the button-holes of an evening.

Mr. Hewland brought grapes and oranges and flowers to Miss Bree. Bel
fetched home little presents of her own to her aunt, making a pet of
her: ice-cream in a paper cone, horehound candy, once, a tumbler of
black currant jelly. But that last was very dear. If Aunt Blin had
eaten much of other things, they could not have afforded it, for
there were only half earnings now.

To-morrow kept coming, but Miss Bree kept on not getting any better.
"She didn't see the reason," she said; "she never had a cold hang on
so. She believed she'd better go out and shake it off. If she could
have rode down-town she would, but somehow she didn't seem to have
the strength to walk."

The reason she "couldn't have rode," was because all the horses
were sick. It was the singular epidemic of 1872. There were no cars,
no teams; the queer sight was presented in a great city, of the
driveways as clear as the sidewalks; of nobody needed to guard the
crossings or unsnarl the "blocks;" of stillness like Sunday, day
after day; of men harnessed into wagons,--eight human beings
drawing, slowly and heavily, what any poor old prickle-ribs of a
horse, that had life left in him at all, would have trotted
cheerfully off with. A lady's trunk was a cartload; and a lady's
trunk passing through the streets was a curiosity; you could
scarcely get one carried for love or money.

Aunt Blin was a good deal excited; she always was by everything that
befell "her Boston." She would sit by the window in her blanket
shawl, and peer down the Place to see the mail-carts and express
wagons creep slowly by, along Tremont Street, to and from the
railways. She was proud for the men who turned to and did quadruped
work with a will in the emergency, and so took hold of its
sublimity; she was proud of the poor horses, standing in suffering
but royal seclusion in their stables, with hostlers sitting up
nights for them, and the world and all its business "seeing how it
could get along without them;" she was proud of all this crowd of
business that had, by hook or by crook (literally, now), to be done.

She wanted the evening paper the minute it came. She and the music
mistress took the "Transcript" between them, and had the first
reading weeks about. This was her week; she held herself lucky.

The epizootic was like the war: we should have to subside into
common items that would not seem like news at all when that was
over.

We all know, now, what the news was after the epizootic.

Meanwhile Aunt Blin believed, "on her conscience," she had got the
epidemic herself.

Bel had worked hard at the rooms this week, and late at home in the
evenings. Some of the girls lived out at the Highlands, and some in
South Boston; there were days when they could not get in from these
districts; for such as were on the spot there was double press and
hurry. And it was right in the midst of fall and winter work. Bel
earned twelve dollars in six days, and got her pay.

On Saturday night she brought home four Chater's crumpets, and a
pint of oysters. She stewed the oysters in a porringer out of which
everything came nicer than out of any other utensil. While they were
stewing, she made a bit of butter up into a "pat," and stamped it
with the star in the middle of the pressed glass saltcellar; she set
the table near the fire, and laid it out in a specially dainty way;
then she toasted the muffins, and it was past seven o'clock before
all was done.

Aunt Blin sat by, and watched and smelled. She was in no hurry; two
senses at a time were enough to have filled. She had finished the
paper,--it was getting to be an old and much rehashed story,
now,--and had sent it down to Miss Smalley. It would be hers first,
now, for a week. Very well, the excitement was over. That was all
she knew about it.

In the privacy and security of her own room, and with muffins and
oysters for tea, Aunt Blin took out her upper teeth, that she might
eat comfortably. Poor Aunt Blin! she showed her age and her thinness
so. She had fallen away a good deal since she had been sick. But
she was getting better. On Monday morning, she thought she would
certainly be able to go out. All she had to do now was to be careful
of her cough; and Bel had just bought her a new pair of rubbers.

Bartholomew had done his watching and smelling, likewise; he had
made all he could be expected to of that limited enjoyment. Now he
walked round the table with an air of consciousness that supper was
served. He sat by his mistress's chair, lifted one paw with
well-bred expressiveness, stretching out the digits of it as a
dainty lady extends her lesser fingers when she lifts her cup, or
breaks a bit of bread. It was a delicate suggestion of exquisite
appreciation, and of most excellent manners. Once he began a whine,
but recollected himself and suppressed it, as the dainty lady might
a yawn.

Aunt Blin gave him two oysters, and three spoonfuls of broth in his
own saucer, before she helped herself. After all, she ate in her
turn very little more. It was hardly worth while to have made a
business of being comfortable.

"I don't think they have such good oysters as they used to," she
remarked, stepping over her s'es in a very carpeted and
stocking-footed way.

"Perhaps I didn't put enough seasoning"--Bel began, but was
interrupted in the middle of her reply.

The big bell two squares off clanged a heavy stroke caught up on the
echo by others that sounded smaller farther and farther away, making
their irregular, yet familiar phrase and cadence on the air.

It was the fire alarm.

"H--zh! Hark!" Aunt Blin changed the muffled but eager monosyllable
to a sharper one; and being reminded, felt in her lap, under her
napkin, for her "ornaments," as Bel called them.

But she counted the strokes before she put them in, nodding her
head, and holding up her finger to Bel and Bartholomew for silence.
Everything stopped where it was with Miss Bree when the fire alarm
sounded.

One--two--three--four--five.

"In the city," said Aunt Blin, with a certain weird unconscious
satisfaction; and whipped the porcelains into their places before
the second tolling should begin. They were like Pleasant Riderhood's
back hair: she was all twisted up, now, and ready.

One--two.

"That ain't fur off. Down Bedford Street way. Give me the fire-book,
and my glasses."

She turned the folds of the card with one hand, and adjusted her
spectacles with the other.

"Bedford and Lincoln. Why, that's close by where Miss Proddle
boards!"

"That's the _box_, Auntie. You always forget the fire isn't in the
box."

"Well, it will be if they don't get along with their steamers. I
ain't heard one go by yet."

"They haven't any horses, you know."

"Hark! there's one now! O, _do_ hush! There's the bell again!"

Bel was picking up the tea-things for washing. She set down the
little pile which she had gathered, went to the window, and drew up
the blind.

"My gracious! And there's the fire!"

It shone up, red, into the sky, from over the tall roofs.

Ten strokes from the deep, deliberate bells.

"There comes Miss Smalley, todillating up to see," said Bel,
excitedly.

"And the people are just _rushing_ along Tremont Street!"

"_Can_ you see? asked Miss Smalley, bustling in like the last
little belated hen at feeding-time, with a look on all sides at once
to discover where the corn might be.

"_Isn't_ it big, O?" And she stood up, tiptoe, by the window, as if
that would make any comparative difference between her height and
that of Hotel Devereux, across the square; or as if she could reach
up farther with her eyes after the great flashes that streamed into
the heavens.

Again the smiting clang,--repeated, solemn, exact. No flurry in
those measured sounds, although their continuance tolled out a
city's doom.

Twice twelve.

"There goes Mr. Sparrow," said the music mistress, as the
watchmaker's light, unequal hop came over the stairs. "I suppose he
can see from his window pretty near where it is."

A slight, dull color came up into the angles of the little lady's
face, as she alluded to the upper lodger's room, for there was a
tacit impression in the house--and she knew it--that if Miss Smalley
and Mr. Sparrow had been thrown together earlier in life, it would
have been very suitable; and that even now it might not be
altogether too late.

Another step went springing down. Bel knew that, but she said
nothing.

"Don't you think we might go out to the end of the street and see?"
suggested Miss Smalley.

Bel had on hat and waterproof in a moment.

"Don't you stir, Auntie, to catch cold, now! We'll be back
directly."

Miss Smalley was already in her room below, snatching up hood and
shawl.

Down the Place they went, and on, out into the broad street.
Everybody was running one way,--northward. They followed, hurrying
toward the great light, glowing and flashing before them.

From every westward avenue came more men, speeding in ever
thickening lines verging to one centre. Like streams into a river
channel, they poured around the corners into Essex Street, at last,
filling it from wall to wall,--a human torrent.

"This is as far as we can go," Miss Smalley said, stopping in one of
the doorways of Boylston Market. A man in a blouse stood there,
ordering the driver of a cart.

"Where is the fire, sir?" asked Miss Smalley, with a ladylike air of
not being used to speak to men in the street, but of this being an
emergency.

"Corner of Kingston and Summer; great granite warehouse, five
stories high," said the man in the blouse, civilly, and proceeding
to finish his order, which was his own business at the moment,
though Boston was burning.

The two women turned round and went back. The heavy bells were
striking three times twelve.

A boy rushed past them at the corner by the great florist's shop. He
was going the other way from the fire, and was impatient to do his
errand and get back. He had a basket of roses to carry; ordered for
some one to whom it would come,--the last commission of that sort
done that night perhaps,--as out of the very smoke and terror of the
hour; a singular lovely message of peace, of the blessed thoughts
that live between human hearts though a world were in ashes. All
through the wild night, those exquisite buds would be silently
unfolding their gracious petals. How strange the bloomed-out roses
would look to-morrow!

All the house in Leicester Place was astir, and recklessly mixed
up, when Miss Smalley and Bel Bree came back. The landlady and her
servant were up in Mr. Sparrow's room, calling to Miss Bree below.
The whole place was full of red fierce light.

Aunt Blin, faithful to Bel's parting order, stood in the spirit of
an unrelieved sentinel, though the whole army had broken camp,
keeping herself steadfastly safe, in her own doorway. To be sure,
there was a draught there, but it was not her fault.

"I _must_ go up and see it," she said eagerly, when Bel appeared.
Bel drew her into the room, put her first into a gray hospital
dressing-gown, then into a waterproof, and after all covered her up
with a striped blue and white bed comforter. She knew she would keep
dodging in and out, and she might as well go where she would stay
quiet.

And so these three women went up-stairs, where they had never been
before. The door of Mr. Hewland's room was open. A pair of slippers
lay in the middle of the floor; a newspaper had fluttered into a
light heap, like a broken roof, beside them; a dressing-gown was
thrown over the back of a chair.

Bel came last, and shut that door softly as she passed, not letting
her eyes intrude beyond the first involuntary glimpse. She was
maidenly shy of the place she had never seen,--where she had heard
the footsteps go in and out, over her head.

The five women crowded about and into Mr. Sparrow's little dormer
window. Miss Smalley lingered to notice the little black teapot on
the grate-bar, where a low fire was sinking lower,--the faded cloth
on the table, and the empty cup upon it,--the pipe laid down
hastily, with ashes falling out of it. She thought how lonesome Mr.
Sparrow was living,--doing for himself.

All the square open space down through which the blue heavens looked
between those great towering buildings, was filled with brightness
as with a flood. The air was lurid crimson. Every stone and chip and
fragment, lay revealed in the strange, transfiguring light. Away
across the stable-roofs, they could read far-off signs painted in
black letters upon brick walls. Church spires stood up, bathed in a
wild glory, pointing as out of some day of doom, into the
everlasting rest. The stars showed like points of clear, green,
unearthly radiance, against that contrast of fierce red.

It surged up and up, as if it would over-boil the very stars
themselves. It swayed to right,--to left; growing in an awful bulk
and intensity, without changing much its place, to their eyes, where
they stood. On the tops of the high Apartment Hotel, and all the
flat-roofed houses in Hero and Pilgrim streets, were men and women
gazing. Their faces, which could not have been discerned in the
daylight, shone distinct in this preternatural illumination. Their
voices sounded now and then, against the yet distant hum and crackle
of the conflagration, upon the otherwise still air. The rush had,
for a while, gone by. The streets in this quarter were empty.

Grand and terrible as the sight was to them in Leicester Place, they
could know or imagine little of what the fire was really doing.

"It backs against the wind," they heard one man say upon the
stable-roof.

They could not resist opening the window, just a little, now and
then, to listen; though Bel would instantly pull Aunt Blin away, and
then they would put it down. Poor Aunt Blin's nose grew very cold,
though she did not know it. Her nose was little and sensitive. It is
not the big noses that feel the cold the most. Aunt Blin took cold
through her face and her feet; and these the dressing-gown, and the
waterproof, and the comforter, did not protect.

"It must have spread among those crowded houses in Kingston and
South streets," Aunt Blin said; and as she spoke, her poor old
"ornaments" chattered.

"Aunt Blin, you _shall_ come down, and take something hot, and go to
bed!" exclaimed Bel, peremptorily. "We can't stay here all night.
Mr. Sparrow will be back,--and everybody. I think the fire is going
down. It's pretty still now. We've seen it all. Come!"

They had never a thought, any of them, of more than a block or so,
burning. Of course the firemen would put it out. They always did.

"See! See!" cried the landlady. "O my sakes and sorrows!"

A huge, volcanic column of glittering sparks--of great flaming
fragments--shot up and soared broad and terrible into the deep sky.
A long, magnificent, shimmering, scintillant train--fire spangled
with fire--swept southward like the tail of a comet, that had at
last swooped down and wrapped the earth.

"The roofs have fallen in," said innocent old Miss Smalley.

"That will be the last. Now they will stop it," said Bel. "Come,
Auntie!"

And after midnight, for an hour or more, the house, with the five
women in it, hushed. Aunt Blin took some hot Jamaica ginger, and Bel
filled a jug with boiling water, wrapped it in flannel, and tucked
it into the bed at her feet. Then she gave her a spoonful of her
cough-mixture, took off her own clothes, and lay down.

Still the great fire roared, and put out the stars. Still the room
was red with the light of it. Aunt Blin fell asleep.

Bel lay and listened, and wondered. She would not move to get up and
look again, lest she should rouse her aunt. Suddenly, she heard the
boom of a great explosion. She started up.

Miss Smalley's voice sounded at the door.

"It's awful!" she whispered, through the keyhole, in a ghostly way.
"I thought you ought to know. The cinders are flying everywhere. I
heard an engine come up from the railroad. People are running along
the streets, and teams are going, and everything,--_the other way_!
They're blowing up houses! There, don't you hear that?"

It was another sullen, heavy roar.

Bel sprang out of bed; hurried into her garments; opened the door to
Miss Smalley. They went and stood together in the entry-window.

"All Kingman's carriages are out; sick horses and all; they've
trundled wheelbarrow loads of things down to the stable. There's a
heap of furniture dumped down in the middle of the place. Women are
going up Tremont Street with bundles and little children. Where _do_
you s'pose it's got to?"

"See there!" said Bel, pointing across the square to the great,
dark, public building. High up, in one of the windows, a gas-light
glimmered. Two men were visible in the otherwise deserted place.
They were putting up a step-ladder.

"Do you suppose they are there nights,--other nights?" Bel asked
Miss Smalley.

"No. They're after books and things. They're going to pack up."

"The fire _can't_ be coming here!"

Bel opened the window carefully, as she spoke. A man was standing in
the livery-stable door. A hack came rapidly down, and the driver
called out something as he jumped off.

"Where?" they heard the hostler ask.

"Most up to Temple Place."

"Do they mean the fire? They can't!"

They did; but they were, as we know, somewhat mistaken. Yet that
great, surf-like flame, rushing up and on, was rioting at the very
head of Summer Street, and plunging down Washington. Trinity Church
was already a blazing wreck.

"Has it come up Summer Street, or how?" asked Bel, helplessly, of
helpless Miss Smalley. "Do you suppose Fillmer & Bylles is burnt?"

"I _must_ ask somebody!"

These women, with no man belonging to them to come and give them
news,--restrained by force of habit from what would have been at
another time strange to do, and not knowing even yet the utter
exceptionality of this time,--while down among the hissing engines
and before the face of the conflagration stood girls in delicate
dress under evening wraps, come from gay visits with brothers and
friends, and drawn irresistibly by the grand, awful magnetism of the
spectacle,--while up on the aristocratic avenues, along Arlington
Street, whose windows flashed like jewels in the far-shining flames,
where the wonderful bronze Washington sat majestic and still against
that sky of stormy fire as he sits in every change and beautiful
surprise of whatever sky of cloud or color may stretch about
him,--on Commonwealth Avenue, where splendid mansions stood with
doors wide open, and drays unloading merchandise saved from the
falling warehouses into their freely offered shelter,--ladies were
walking to and fro, as if in their own halls and parlors, watching,
and questioning whomsoever came, and saying to each other hushed and
solemn or excited words,--when the whole city was but one great home
upon which had fallen a mighty agony and wonder that drove its
hearts to each other as the hearts of a household,--these two, Bel
Bree and little Miss Smalley, knew scarcely anything that was
definite, and had been waiting and wondering all night, thinking it
would be improper to talk into the street!

A young lad came up the court at last; he lived next door; he was an
errand-boy in some great store on Franklin Street. His mother spoke
to him from her window.

"Bennie! how is it?"

"Mother! All Boston is gone up! Summer Street, High Street, Federal
Street, Pearl Street, Franklin Street, Milk Street, Devonshire
Street,--everything, clear through to the New Post Office. I've been
on the Common all night, guarding goods. There's another fellow
there now, and I've come home to get warm. I'm almost frozen."

His mother was at the door as he finished speaking, and took him in;
and they heard no more.

The boy's words were heavy with heavy meaning. He said them without
any boy-excitement; they carried their own excitement in the heart
of them. In those eight hours he had lived like a man; in an
experience that until of late few men have known.

They did not know how long they stood there after that, with
scarcely a word to each other,--only now and then some utterance of
sudden recollection of this and that which must have vanished away
within that stricken territory,--taking in, slowly, the reality, the
tremendousness of what had happened,--was happening.

It was five o'clock when Mr. Hewland came in, and up the stairs, and
found them there. Aunt Blin had not awaked. There was a trace of
morphine in her cough-drops, and Bel knew now, since she had slept
so long, that she would doubtless sleep late into the morning. That
was well. It would be time enough to tell her by and by. There would
be all day,--all winter,--to tell it in.

Mr. Hewland told them, hastily, the main history of the fire.

"Is Trinity Church?"--asked poor Miss Smalley tremblingly.

She had not said anything about it to Bel Bree; she could not think
of that great stone tower as having let the fire in,--as not having
stood, cool and strong, against any flame. And Trinity Church was
_her_ tower. She had sat in one seat in its free gallery for
fourteen years. If that were gone, she would hardly know where to
go, to get near to heaven. Only nine days ago,--All Saints'
Day,--she had sat there listening to beautiful words that laid hold
upon the faith of all believers, back through the church, back
before Christ to the prophets and patriarchs, and told how God was
_her_ God because He had been theirs. The old faith,--and the Old
Church! "Was Trinity?"--She could not say,--"burned."

But Mr. Hewland answered in one word,--"Gone."

That word answered so many questions on which life and love hung,
that fearful night!

Mr. Hewland was wet and cold. He went up to his room and changed
his clothing. When the daylight, pale and scared, was creeping in,
he came down again.

"Would you not like to go down and see?" he said to Bel.

"Can I?"

"Yes. There is no danger. The streets are comparatively clear. I
will go with you."

Bel asked Miss Smalley.

"Will you come? Auntie will be sure to sleep, I think."

Miss Smalley had scarcely heart either to go or stay. Of the two, it
was easier to go. To do--to see--something.

Mr. Sparrow came in. He met them at the door, and turned directly
back with them.

He, too, was a free-seat worshipper at Old Trinity. He and the
music-mistress--they were both of English birth, hence of the same
national faith--had been used to go from the same dwelling,
separately, to the same house of worship, and sit in opposite
galleries. But their hearts had gone up together in the holy old
words that their lips breathed in the murmur of the congregation.
These links between them, of country and religion, which they had
never spoken of, were the real links.

As they went forth this Sunday morning, in company for the first
time, toward the church in which they should never kneel again, they
felt another,--the link that Eve and Adam felt when the sword of
flame swept Paradise.

Plain old souls!--Plain old bodies, I mean, hopping and
"todillating"--as Bel expressed the little spinster's gait--along
together; their souls walked in a sweet and gracious reality before
the sight of God.

Bel and Mr. Hewland were beside each other. They had never walked
together before, of course; but they hardly thought of the
unusualness. The time broke down distinctions; nothing looked
strange, when everything was so.

They went along by the Common fence. In the street, a continuous
line of wagons passed them, moving southward. Gentlemen sat on
cart-fronts beside the teamsters, accompanying their fragments of
property to places of bestowal. Inside the inclosure, in the malls,
along under the trees, upon the grass, away back to the pond, were
heaps of merchandise. Boxes, bales, hastily collected and unpacked
goods of all kinds, from carpets to cotton-spools, were thrown in
piles, which men and boys were guarding, the police passing to and
fro among them all. People were wrapped against the keen November
cold, in whatsoever they could lay their hands on. A group of men
pacing back and forth before a pyramid of cases, had thrown great
soft white blankets about their shoulders, whose bright striped
borders hung fantastically about them, and whose corners fell and
dragged upon the muddy ground.

Down by Park Street corner, and at Winter Street, black columns of
coal smoke went up from the steamers; the hose, like monstrous
serpents, twisted and trailed along the pavements; water stood in
pools and flowed in runnels, everywhere.

They went down Winter Street, stepping over the hose-coils, and
across the leaking streams; they came to the crossing of Washington,
where yesterday throngs of women passed, shopping from stately store
to store.

Beyond, were smoke and ruin; swaying walls, heaps of fallen masonry,
chevaux-de-frises of bristling gas and water-pipes, broken and
protruding. A little way down, to the left, sheets of flame, golden
in the gray daylight, were pouring from the face of the beautiful
"Transcript" building.

They stood, fearful and watchful, under the broken granite walls
opposite Trinity Church.

Windows and doors were gone from the grand old edifice; inside, the
fire was shining; devouring at its dreadful ease, the sacred
architecture and furnishings that it had swept down to the ground.

"See! There he is!" whispered Miss Smalley to Mr. Sparrow, as she
gazed with unconscious tears falling fast down her pale old cheeks.

It was the Rector of Trinity, who thought to have stood this morning
in the holy place to speak to his people. Down the middle of the
street he came, and went up to the cumbered threshold and the open
arch, within which a terrible angel was speaking in his stead.

"Do you think he remembers now, what he said about the God of
Daniel, as he looks into the blazing fiery furnace?"

"I dare say he doesn't ever remember what he _said_; but he
remembers always what _is_," answered the watch-maker.




CHAPTER XXIII.

EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY.


The strange, sad Sunday wore along.

The teams rolled on, incessantly, through the streets; the blaze and
smoke went up from the sixty acres of destruction; friends gathered
together and talked of the one thing, that talk as they might, would
not be put into any words. Men whose wealth had turned to ashes in a
night went to and fro in the same coats they had worn yesterday, and
hardly knew yet whether they themselves were the same or not. It
seemed, so strangely, as if the clock might be set back somehow, and
yesterday be again; it was so little way off!

Women who had received, perhaps, their last wages for the winter on
Saturday night, sat in their rooms and wondered what would be on
Monday.

Aunt Blin was excited; strong with excitement. She went down-stairs
to see Miss Smalley, who was too tired to sit up.

Out of the fire, Bel Bree and Paulina Smalley had each brought
something that remained by them secretly all this day.

When they had stopped there under those smoked and shattered walls,
and Morris Hewland had drawn Bel's hand within his arm to keep her
from any movement into danger, he had gently laid his own fingers,
in care and caution, upon hers. A feeling had come to them both with
the act, and for a moment, as if the world, with all its great
built-up barriers of stone, had broken down around them, and lay at
their feet in fragments, among which they two stood free together.

The music-mistress and the watchmaker, looking in upon their place
of prayer, seeing it empty and eaten out by the yet lingering
tongues of fire, had exchanged those words about the things that
_are_. For a minute, through the emptiness, they reached into the
eternal deep; for a minute their simple souls felt themselves, over
the threshold of earthly ruin, in the spaces where there is no need
of a temple any more; they forgot their worn and far-spent
lives,--each other's old and year-marked faces; they were as two
spirits, met without hindrance or incongruity, looking into each
other's spiritual eyes.

Poor old Miss Smalley, when she came home and took off her hood
before her little glass, and saw how pale she was with her night's
watching and excitement, and how the thin gray hairs had straggled
over her forehead, came back with a pang into the flesh, and was
afraid she had been ridiculous; but lying tired upon her bed, in the
long after hours of the day, she forgot once more what manner of
outside woman she was, and remembered only, with a pervading peace,
how the watchmaker had spoken.

Night came. The pillar of smoke that had gone up all day, turned
again into a pillar of fire, and stood in the eastern heavens.

The time of safety, when there had been no flaming terror, was
already so far off, that people, fearing this night to surrender
themselves to sleep, wondered that in any nights they had ever
dared,--wondered that there had ever been anything but fear and
burning, in this great, crowded city.

The guards paced the streets; the roll of wagons quieted. The
stricken town was like a fever patient seized yesterday with a
sudden, devouring rage of agony,--to-day, calmed, put under care, a
rule established, watchers set.

Miss Smalley went from window to window as the darkness--and the
apparition of flame--came on. Rested by the day's surrender to
exhaustion, she was alert and apprehensive and excited now.

"It will be sure to burst out again," she said; "it always does."

"Don't say so to Aunt Blin," whispered Bel. "Look at her cheeks, and
her eyes. She is sick-abed this minute, and she _will_ keep up!"

At nine o'clock, the very last thing, she spoke with the
music-mistress again, at the door. Miss Smalley kept coming up into
the passage to look out at that end window.

"I don't mean to get up if it does burn," Bel said, resolutely. "It
won't come here. We ought to sleep. That's our business. There'll be
enough to do, maybe, afterwards."

But for all that, in the dead of the night, she was roused again.

A sound of bells; a long alarm of which she lost the count; a great
explosion. Then that horrible cataract of flame and sparks
overhanging the stars as it did before, and paling them out.

It seemed as if it had always been so; as if there had never been a
still, dark heaven under which to lie down tranquilly and sleep.

"The wind has changed, and the fire is awful, and I can't help it,"
sounded Miss Smalley's voice, meek and deprecating, through the
keyhole, at which she had listened till she had heard Bel moving.

Bel lit the gas, and then went out into the passage.

Flakes of fire were coming down over the roofs into the Place
itself.

The great rush and blaze were all this way, now. They were right
under the storm of it.

Aunt Blin woke up.

"What is it?" she asked, excitedly. "Is it begun again? Is it
coming?" And before Bel could stop her, she was out on the entry
floor with her bare feet.

A floating cinder fell and struck the sash.

"We must be dressed! We must pack up! Make haste, Bel! Where's
Bartholomew?"

Making a movement, hurriedly, to go back across her own room, Miss
Bree turned faint and giddy, and fell headlong.

They got her into bed again, and brought her to. But with
circulation and consciousness, came the rush of fever. In half an
hour she was in a burning heat, wandering and crying out
deliriously.

"O what shall we do? We must have a doctor. She'll die!" cried Bel.

"If I dared to go up and call Mr. Sparrow?" said the spinster,
timidly.

Her thought reverted as instantly to Mr. Sparrow, and yet with the
same conscious shyness, as if she had been eighteen, and the poor
old watchmaker twenty-one. Because, you see, she was a woman; and
she had but been a woman the longer, and her woman's heart grown
tenderer and shyer, in its unlived life, that she was four and
fifty, and not eighteen. There are three times eighteen in four and
fifty.

"O, Mr. Sparrow isn't any good!" cried Bel, impetuously. "If you
wouldn't mind seeing whether Mr. Hewland is up-stairs?"

Miss Smalley did not mind that at all; and though numbly aggrieved
at the reflection upon Mr. Sparrow, went up and knocked.

Bel heard Morris Hewland's spring upon the floor, and his voice, as
he asked the matter. Heavy with fatigue, he had not roused till now.

As he came down, five minutes later, and Bel Bree met him at the
door, the gas suddenly went out, and they stood, except for the
flame outside, in darkness.

In house and street it was the same. Miss Smalley called out that it
was so. "The stable light is gone," she said. "Yes,--and the lights
down Tremont Street."

Then that fearful robe of fire, thick sown with spangling cinders,
seemed sweeping against the window panes.

Only that terrible light over all the town.

"O, what does it mean?" said Bel.

"It is Chicago over again," the young man answered her, with a grave
dismay in his voice.

"See there,--and there!" said Miss Smalley, at the window. "People
are up, lighting candles."

"But Aunt Blin is sick!" said Bel. "We must take care of her. What
shall we do?"

"I'll go and send a doctor; and I'll bring you news. Have you a
candle? Stop; I'll fetch you something."

He sprang up-stairs, and returned with a box of small wax tapers.
They were only a couple of inches long, and the size of her little
finger.

"I'll get you something better if I can; and don't be frightened."

The great glare, though it shed its light luridly upon all outside,
was not enough to find things by within. Bel took courage at this,
thinking the heart of it must still be far off. She gave one look
into the depth of the street, shadowed by its buildings, and having
a strange look of eerie gloom, even so little way beneath that upper
glow. Then she drew down the painted shades, and shut the sky
phantom out.

"Mr. Hewland will come and tell us," she said. "We must work."

She heated water and got a bath for Aunt Blin's feet. She put a
cool, wet bandage on her head. She mixed some mustard and spread a
cloth and laid it to her chest. Miss Bree breathed easier; but the
bandage upon her head dried as though the flame had touched it.

"I'll tell you what," said good, inopportune Miss Smalley; "she's
going to be dreadful sick, I'm afraid. It'll be head and lungs both.
That's what my sister had."

"_Don't_ tell me what!" cried Bel, irritatedly.

But the doctor told her what, when he came.

Not in words; doctors don't do that. But she read it in his grave
carefulness; she detected it in the orders which he gave. People
brought up in the country,--where neighbors take care of each other,
and where every symptom is talked over, and the history of every
fatal disorder turns into a tradition,--learn about sickness and the
meanings of it; on its ghastly and ominous side, at any rate.

Mr. Hewland came back and brought two candles, which he had with
difficulty procured from a hotel. He brought word, also, that the
fire was under control; that they need feel no more alarm.

And so this second night of peril and disaster passed painfully and
slowly by.

But on the Monday, the day in which Boston was like a city given
over into the hands of a host,--when its streets were like
slow-moving human glaciers, down the midst of which in a narrow
channel the heavier flow of burdened teams passed scarcely faster
forward than the hindered side streams,--Aunt Blin lay in the grasp
and scorch of a fire that feeds on life; wasting under that which
uplifts and frenzies, only to prostrate and destroy.

I shall not dwell upon it. It had to be told; the fire also had to
be told; for it happened, and could not be ignored. It happened,
intermingling with all these very things of which I write;
precipitating, changing, determining much.

Before the end of that first week, in which the stun and shock were
reacting in prompt, cheerful, benevolent organizing and
providing,--in which, through wonderful, dreamlike ruins, like the
ruins of the far-off past, people were wandering, amazed, seeing a
sudden torch laid right upon the heart and centre of a living
metropolis and turning it to a shadow and a decay,--in which human
interests and experiences came to mingle that had never consciously
approached each other before,--in which the little household of
independent existences in Leicester Place was fused into an
almost family relation all at once, after years of mere
juxtaposition,--before the end of that week, Aunt Blin died.

It was as though the fiery thrust that had transpierced the heart of
"her Boston," had smitten the centre of her own vitality in the
self-same hour.

All her clothes hung in the closet; the very bend of her arm was in
the sleeve of the well worn alpaca dress, the work-basket, with a
cloth jacket-front upon it, in which was a half-made button-hole,
left just at the stitch where all her labor ended, was on the round
table; Cheeps was singing in the window; Bartholomew was winking on
the hearth-rug; and little Bel, among these belongings that she knew
not what to do with any more, was all alone.




CHAPTER XXIV.

TEMPTATION.


The Relief Committee was organizing in Park Street Vestry.

Women with help in their hands and sympathy in their hearts, came
there to meet women who wanted both; came, many of them, straight
from the first knowledge of the loss of almost all their own money,
with word and act of fellowship ready for those upon whose very life
the blow fell yet closer and harder. Over the separating lines of
class and occupation a divine impulse reached, at least for the
moment, both ways.

"Boffin's Bower" was all alert with aggressive, independent
movement. Here, they did not believe in the divine impulse of the
hour. They would stay on their own side of the line. They would help
themselves and each other. They would stand by their own class, and
cry "hands off!" to the rich women.

What was to be done, for lasting understanding and true relation,
between these conflicting, yet mutually dependent elements?

In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought
neither yet.

Bel Bree was one.

The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with
her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps
and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was
shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one
broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day
she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her
brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by
disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly,
conscious.

"I give all I leave in the world to my niece Belinda Bree."

"Kellup" came down and buried his sister, and "looked into things;"
concluded that "Bel was pretty comfortable, and with good
folks,--Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley; 'sposed she calc'lated to
keep on, now; she could come back if she wanted to, though."

Bel did not want to. She would stay here a little while, at any
rate, and think. So Kellup went back into New Hampshire.

There was a little money laid up since Miss Bree and Bel had been
together; Bel could get along, she thought, till work began again.
But it was no longer living; it would not be living then; it would
be only work and solitude. She was like a great many others of them
now; girls without tie or belonging,--holding on where they could.
Elise Mokey had said to her,--"See if you could help yourself if you
hadn't Aunt Blin!" and now she began to look forward against that
great, dark "If."

Everything had come together. If work had kept on, there would have
been these little savings to fall back upon when earnings did not
quite meet outlay. But now she should use them up before work came.
And what did it signify, anyhow? All the comfort--all the meaning of
it--was gone.

They were all kind to her; Miss Smalley sat with her evenings, till
Bel wished she would have the wiser kindness to go away and let her
be miserable, just a little while.

Morris Hewland knocked at the door one afternoon when the
music-mistress was out, giving her lessons.

Bel did not ask him in to sit down; she stood just within the
doorway, and talked with him.

He made some friendly inquiries that led to conversation; he drew
her to say something of her plans. He had not come on purpose; he
hardly knew what he had come for. He had only knocked to say a word
of kindness; to look in the poor, pretty little face that he felt
such a tenderness for.

"I can't bear to give things up,--because they _were_ pleasant," Bel
said. "But I suppose I shall have to go away. It isn't home; there
isn't anybody to make home _with_ any more. I know what I _had_
thought of, a while ago; I believe I know what there is that I might
do; I am just waiting until the thoughts come back, and begin to
look as they did. Nothing looks as it did yet."

"Nothing?" asked Morris Hewland, his eyes questioning of hers.

"Yes,--friends. But the friends are all outside, after all."

Hewland stood silent.

How beautiful it might be to make home for such a little heart as
this! To surround her with comfort and prettiness, such as she loved
and knew how to contrive out of so little! To say,--"Let us belong
together. Make home with _me_!"

Satan, as an angel of light, entered into him. He knew he could not
say this to her as he ought to say it; as he would say it to a girl
of his own class whom father and mother would welcome. There was no
girl of his own class he had ever cared to say it to. This was the
first woman he had found, with whom the home thought joined itself.
And this could not rightly be. If he took her, he would no longer
have the things to give her. They would be cast out together. And
all he could do was to make pictures, of which he had never sold
one, or thought to sell one, in all his life. He would be just as
poor as she was; and he felt that he did not know how to be poor.
Besides, he wanted to be rich for her. He wanted to give her,--now,
right off,--everything.

Why shouldn't he give? Why shouldn't she take? He had plenty of
money; he was his father's only son. He meant right; so he said to
himself; and what had the world to do with it?

"I wish I could take care of you, Bel! Would you let me? Would you
go with me?"

The words seemed to have said themselves. The devil, whom he had let
have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through
them before he knew.

"Where?" asked Bel. "Home?"

"Yes,--home," said the young man, hesitating.

"Where your mother lives?"

Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of
defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge.

"No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there. It would not do for you, or
her either. But I could give you a little home. I could take care of
you all your life; all _my_ life. And I would. I will never make a
home for anybody else. I will be true to you, if you will trust
me,--always. So help me God!"

He meant it; there was no dark, deliberate sin in his heart, any
more than in hers; he was tempted on the tenderest, truest side of
his nature, as he was tempting her. He did not see why he should
not choose the woman he would live with all his life, though he knew
he could not choose her in the face of all the world, though he
could not be married to her in the Church of the Holy Commandments,
with bridesmaids and ushers, and music and flowers, and point lace
and white satin, and fifty private carriages waiting at the door,
and half a ton of gold and silver plate and verd antique piled up
for them in his father's house.

His father was a hard, proud, unflinching man, who loved and
indulged his son, after his fashion and possibility; but who would
never love or indulge him again if he offended in such a thing as
this. His mother was a woman who simply could not understand that a
girl like Bel Bree was a creature made by God at all, as her
daughters were, and her son's wife should be.

"Do you care enough for me?"

Bel stood utterly still. She had never been asked any such questions
before, but she felt in some way, that this was not all; ought not
to be all; that there was more he was to say, before she could
answer him.

He came toward her. He put his hands on hers. He looked eagerly in
her eyes. He did not hesitate now; the man's nature was roused in
him. He must make her speak,--say that she cared.

"_Don't_ you care? Bel--you do! You are my little wife; and the
world has not anything to do with it!"

She broke away from him; she shrunk back.

"Don't do that," he said, imploringly. "I'm not bad, Bel. The world
is bad. Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it. Don't think
me bad."

There was not anything bad in his eyes; in his young, loving,
handsome face. Bel was not sure enough,--strong enough,--to
denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was
tempting him, and her by him, as Peter's passionate remonstrance
tempted the Christ,--"Thou art Satan. Get thee behind me."

Yet she shrunk, bewildered.

"I don't know; I can't understand. Let me go now Mr. Hewland."

She turned away from him, into the chamber, and reached her hand to
the door as she turned, putting her fingers on its edge to close it
after him. She stood with her back to him; listening, not looking,
for him to go.

He retreated, then, lingeringly, across the threshold, his eyes upon
her still. She shut the door slowly, walking backward as she pushed
it to. She had _left_, if not driven the devil behind her. Yet she
did not know what she had done. She was still bewildered. I believe
the worst she thought of what had happened was that he wanted to
marry her secretly, and hide her away.

"Aunt Blin!" she cried, when she felt herself all alone. "Aunt
Blin!--She _can't_ have gone so very far away, quite yet!"

She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out.

She went in, where Aunt Blin's clothes were hanging. She grasped the
old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing. She hid her
face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had
bent to its tasks in it.

"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any
good--any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?"

She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came
away, and sat down.

She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this
doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she
did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her.

"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they
might help us?"

She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for
them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go
_in_; not to reach painfully up, and away,--after that world in
which we also, though blindly, dwell.

On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her glasses.

Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel,
came suddenly into her mind.

"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because
they read, always, the living Word in heaven."

Was that the way? Might she enter so, and find them?

She moved slowly to the table.

It was growing dark. She struck a match and lit the gas, turning it
low. She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter
portion. She opened it in Matthew,--to the nineteenth chapter.

When she had read that, she knew what she was to do.

She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night.

In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the
day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all
gone.

She opened her door, and sat down, waiting, before the fire. Did
she think of that night when she had had on the rose-colored silk,
and had set the door ajar? Something in her had made her ashamed of
that. She was not ashamed--she had no misgiving--of this that she
was going to do now.

She was all alone; she had no other place to wait in she had no one
to tell her anything. She was going to do a plain, right thing,
whether it was just what anybody else would do, or not. She never
even asked herself that question.

She heard Mr. Sparrow, with his hop and step, come down over the
stairs. He always came down first of all. Then for another half
hour, she sat still. At the end of that time, Morris Hewland's door
unlatched and closed again.

Her heart beat quick. She stood up, with her face toward the open
door. At the foot of that upper flight, she heard him pause. She
could not see him till he passed; and he might pass without turning.
Unless he turned, she would be out of his sight; for the door swung
inward from the far corner. No matter.

He went by with a slow step. He could not help seeing the open door.
But he did not stop or turn, until he reached the stairhead of the
second flight; then he had to face this way again. And as he passed
around the railing, he looked up; for Bel was standing where she had
stood last night.

She had put herself in his way; but she had not done it lightly,
with any half intent, to give _him_ new opportunity for words. There
was a pure, gentle quiet in her face; she had something herself to
say. He saw it, and went back.

He colored, as he gave her his hand. Her face was pale.

"Come in a moment, Mr. Hewland," said the simple, girlish, voice.

He followed her in.

"You asked me questions last night, and I did not know how to answer
them. I want to ask you one question, now."

She had brought him to the side of the round table, upon whose red
cloth the large Bible lay. It was open at the place where she had
read it.

She put her finger on the page, and made him look. She drew the
finger slowly down from line to line, as if she were pointing for a
little child to read; and his eye followed it.

"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh.

"Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore
God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

"Is that the way you will make a home and give it to me,--before
them all?" she said.

He forgot the sophistries he might have used; he forgot to say that
it _was_ to leave father and mother and join himself to her, that he
had purposed; he forgot to tell her again that he would be true to
her all his life, and that nothing should put them asunder. He did
not take up those words, as men have done, and say that God had
joined their hearts together and made them in his sight one. The
angels were beside him, in his turn, as he read. Those sentences of
the Christ, shining up at him from the page, were like the look
turned back upon Peter, showing him his sin.

"One flesh:" to be seen and known as one. To have one body of
living; to be outwardly joined before the face of men. None to set
them asunder, or hold them separate by thought, or accident, or
misunderstanding. This was the sacred acknowledgment of man and
wife, and he knew that he had not meant to make it.

As he stood there, silent, she knew it too. She knew that she should
not have been his wife before anybody.

Her young face grew paler, and turned stern.

His flushed: a slow, burning, relentless flush, that betrayed him,
marking him like Cain. He lowered his eyes in the heat of it, and
stood so before the child.

She looked steadfastly at him for one instant; then she shut the
book, and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light of
her presence.

"No: I will not go to that little home with you," she said with a
grief and scorn mingled in her voice, as they might have been in the
voice of an angel.

When she looked round again, he was gone. Their ways had parted.

An hour later, Bel Bree turned the key outside her door, and with a
little leather bag in her hand, saying not a word to any one, went
down into the street.

Across the Common, and over the great hill, she walked straight to
Greenley Street, and to Miss Desire.




CHAPTER XXV.

BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING.


Desire Ledwith had a great many secrets to keep. Everybody came and
told her one.

All these girls whom she knew, had histories; troubles,
perplexities, wrongs, temptations,--greater or less. Gradually, they
all confessed to her. The wrong side of the world's patchwork looked
ugly to her, sometimes.

Now, here came Bel Bree; with her story, and her little leather bag;
her homelessness, her friendlessness. No, not that; for Desire
Ledwith herself contradicted it; even Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley
were a great deal better than nothing. Not friendlessness, then,
exactly; but _belonglessness_.

Desire sent down to Leicester Place for Bel's box; for Cheeps also.
Bel wrote a note to Miss Smalley, asking her to take in Bartholomew.
What came of that, I may as well tell here as anywhere; it will not
take long. It is not really an integral part of our story, but I
think you will like to know.

Miss Smalley herself answered the note. It was easy enough to evade
any close questions on her part; she thought it was "a good deal
more suitable for Bel not to stay at Mrs. Pimminy's alone, and she
wasn't an atom surprised to know she had concluded so;" besides,
Miss Smalley was very much preoccupied with her own concerns.

"There was the room," she said; "and there was the furniture. Now,
would Bel Bree let the things to her, just as they stood, if
she,--well, if Mr. Sparrow,--for she didn't mind telling Bel that
she and Mr. Sparrow had made up their minds to look after each
other's comfort as well as they could the rest of their lives,
seeing how liable we all were to need comfort and company, at fires
and things;--if Mr. Sparrow hired the room of Mrs. Pimminy? And as
to Bartholomew, Mr. Sparrow wouldn't mind him, and she didn't think
Bartholomew would object to Mr. Sparrow. Cats rather took to him, he
thought. They would make the creature welcome, and make much of him;
and not expect it to be considered at all."

Bel concluded the arrangement. She thought it would be a comfort to
know that Aunt Blin's little place was not all broken up, but that
somebody was happy there; that Bartholomew had his old corner of the
rug, and his airings on the sunny window-sill; and Miss
Smalley--Mrs. Sparrow that was to be--would pay her fifteen dollars
a year for the things, and make them last.

"That carpet?" she had said; "why, it hadn't begun to pocket yet;
and there hadn't been any breadths changed; and the mats saved the
hearth-front and the doorway, and she could lay down more. And it
would turn, when it came to that, and last on--as long as ever.
There was six years in that carpet, without darning, if there was a
single day; and Mr. Sparrow always took off his boots and put on his
slippers, the minute ever he got in."

Desire's library was full on Wednesday evenings, now. The girls came
for instruction, for social companionship, for comfort. On the table
in the dining-room were almost always little parcels waiting, ready
done up for one and another; little things Desire and Hazel "thought
of" beforehand, as what they "might like and find convenient; and
what they"--Desire and Hazel--"happened to have." Sometimes it was a
paper of nice prunes for a delicate appetite that was kept too much
to dry, economical food. Perhaps it was a jar of "Liebig's Extract"
for Emma Hollen, that she might make beef-tea for herself; or a
remnant of flannel that "would just do for a couple of undervests."
It was sure to be something just right; something with a real
thought in it.

And out here in the dining-room, as they took their little
parcels,--or lingering in the hall aside from the others, or
stopping in a corner of the library,--they would have their "words"
with Desire and Hazel and Sylvie; always some confidence, or some
question, or some telling of how this or that had gone on or turned
out.

In these days after the Great Fire, no wonder that the dozen or
fifteen became twenty, or even thirty; the very pigeons and sparrows
tell each other where the people are who love and feed them; no
wonder that all the chairs had to be brought in, and that the room
was full; that the room in heart and brain, for sympathy and plan
and counsel, was crowded also, or would have been, if heart and
brain were not made to grow as fast as they take in tendernesses and
thoughts. If, too, one need did not fit right in and help another;
and if being "right in the midst of the work" did not continually
give light and suggestion and opportunity.

Bel Bree came among them now, with her heart full.

"I know it better than ever," she said to Miss Desire. "I _know_
that what ever so many of these girls want, most of all, is _home_.
A place to work in where they can rest between whiles, if it is only
for snatches; not to be out, and on their feet, and just _driving_,
with the minutes at their heels, all day long. Girls want to work
under cover; they can favor themselves then, and not slight the work
either. And especially, they want to _belong_ somewhere. They can't
fling themselves about, separate, anywhere, without a great many
getting spoiled, or lost. They want some signs of care over them;
and I believe there are places where they could have it. If they can
put twenty tucks into a white petticoat for a cent a piece, and work
half a day at it, and find their own fire and bread and tea, why
can't they do it for half a cent a tuck, even, in people's houses,
where they can have fire and lodging and meals, and a name, at any
rate, of being seen to?"

"Say so to them, Bel. Tell them yourself, what you mean to do, and
find out who will do it with you. If this movement could come from
the girls themselves,--if two or three would join together and
begin,--I believe the leaven would work. I believe it is the next
thing, and that somebody is to lead the way. Why not you?"

That night, the Read-and-Talk left off the reading. Miss Ledwith
told them that there was so much to say,--so much she wanted a word
from them about,--that they would give up the books for one evening.
They would think about home, instead of far-off places; about
themselves,--each other,--and things that were laid out for them to
do, instead of people who had taken their turn at the world's work
hundreds of years ago. They would try and talk it out,--this hard
question of work, and place, and living; and see, if they could,
what way was provided,--as in the nature of things there must be
some way,--for everybody to be busy, and everybody to be better
satisfied. She thought Bel Bree had got a notion of one way, that
was open, or might be, to a good many, a way that it remained,
perhaps, for themselves to open rightly.

"Now, Bel, just tell us all how you feel about it. There isn't any
of us whom you wouldn't say it to alone; and every one of us is only
listening separately. When you have finished, somebody else may have
a word to answer."

"I don't know as I _could_ finish," said Bel Bree, "except by going
and living it out. And that is just what I think we have got to do.
I've said it before; the girls know I have; but I'm surer than ever
of it now. Why, where does all the work come from, but out of the
homes? I know some kinds may always have to be done in the lump; but
there's ever so much that might be done where it is wanted, and
everybody be better off. We want homes; and we want real people to
work for; those two things. I _know_ we do. A lot of _stuff_, and
miles of stitches, ain't _work_; it don't make real human beings, I
think. It makes business, I suppose, and money; I don't know what it
all comes round to, though, for anybody; more spending, perhaps, and
more having, but not half so much being. At any rate, it don't come
round in that to us; and we've got to look out for ourselves. If we
get right, who knows but other folks may get righter in consequence?
What I think is, that wherever there's a family,--a father and a
mother and little children,--there's work to do, and a home to do it
in; and we girls who haven't homes and little children, and perhaps
sha'n't ever have,--ain't much likely to have as things are
now,--could be happier and safer, and more used to what we ought to
be used to in case we should,"--(Bel's sentences were getting to be
very rambling and involved, but her thoughts urged her on, and
everybody's in the room followed her),--"if we went right in where
the things were wanted, and did them. The sewing,--and the
cooking,--and the sweeping, too; everything; I mean, whatever we
could; any of it. You call it 'living out,' and say you won't do it,
but what you do _now_ is the living out! We could _afford_ to go and
say to people who are worrying about poor help and awful
wages,--'We'll come and do well by you for half the money. We know
what homes are worth.' And wouldn't some of them think the
millennium was come? _I_ am going to try it."

Bel stopped. She did not think of such a thing as having made a
speech; she had only said a little--just as it came--of what she was
full of.

"You'll get packed in with a lot of dirty servants. You won't have
the home. You'll only have the work of it."

"No, Kate Sencerbox. I sha'n't do that; because I'm going to
persuade you to go with me. And we'll make the home, if they give us
ever so little a corner of it. And as soon as they find out what we
are, they'll treat us accordingly."

Kate Sencerbox shrugged her shoulders.

"The world isn't going to be made all over in a day,--nor Boston
either; not if it _is_ all burnt up to begin with."

"That is true, Kate," said Desire Ledwith. "You will have
difficulties. But you have difficulties now. And wouldn't it be
worth while to change these that are growing worse, for such as
might grow better? Wouldn't it be grand to begin to make even a
little piece of the world over?"

"We could start with new people," said Bel. "Young people. They are
the very ones that have the hardest time with the old sort of
servants. We could go out of town, where the old sort won't stay.
You see it's _homes_ we're after; real ones; and to help make them;
and it's homes they hate!"

"Where did you find it all out, Bel?"

"I don't know. Talk; and newspapers. And it's in the air."

Bel was her old, quick, bright, earnest self, taking hold of this
thing that she so truly meant. She turned round to it eagerly,
escaping from the thoughts which she resolutely flung out of her
mind. There was perhaps a slight impetus of this hurry of escape in
her eagerness. But Bel was strong; strong in her purity; in her real
poet-nature, that reached for and demanded the real soul of living;
in her incapacity to care for the shadow or pretense,--far more the
_sullied_ sham,--of anything. Contempt of the evil had come swiftly
to cure the sting of the evil. Satan would fain have had her, to
sift her like wheat; but she had been prayed for; and now that she
was saved, she was inspired to strengthen her sisters.

"I don't think I could do anything but sewing," said Emma Hollen,
plaintively. "I'm not strong enough. And ladies won't see to their
own sewing, now, in their houses. It's so much easier to go right
into Feede & Treddle's, and buy ready-made, that we've done the
stitching for at forty cents a day, hard work, and find ourselves!"

"I don't say that every girl in Boston can walk right into a nice
good home, and be given something to do there. But I say there's no
danger of too many trying it yet awhile; and by the time they do,
maybe we'll have changed things a little for them. I'm willing to be
the thin edge of the wedge," said Bel Bree.

"Right things have the power. God sees to that," said Desire. "The
right cannot stop working. The life is in it."

"The thing I think of," said Elise Mokey, decidedly, "is suller
kitchens. I ain't ready to be put underground,--not yet awhile. Not
even by way of going to heaven, every night; or as near as four
flights can carry me."

"In the country they don't have cellar kitchens. And anyway, there's
always a window, and a fire; and with things clean and cheerful, and
some green thing growing for Cheeps to sing to, I'll do," said Bel.
"You've got to begin with what there is, as the Pilgrim Fathers
did."

Ray Ingraham could have told them, if she had been there this
Wednesday evening, how Dot had begun. Miss Ledwith said nothing
about it, because she felt that it was an exceptional case. She
would not put a falsely flattering precedent before these girls, to
win them to an experiment which with them might prove a hard and
disappointing one. Desire Ledwith was absolutely fair-minded in
everything she did. The feeling on their part that she was so, was
what gave them their trust in her. To bring a subject to her
consideration and judgment, was to bring it into clear sunlight.

Dot had gone up to Z----, to live with the Kincaids, at the Horse
Shoe.

Drops of quicksilver, if they are put anywise near together, will
run into each other. And that is the law of the kingdom of good.
Circumstances are far more fluid to the blessed magnetism than we
think. The whole tendency of the right, neighborly life is to reach
forth and draw together; to bring into one circle of communication
people and plans of one spirit and purpose. Then, before we know how
it is, we find them linking and fitting here and there, helping
wonderfully to make a beautiful organism of result that we could not
have planned or foreseen beforehand, any more than we could have
planned our own bodies. It is the growing up into one body in
Christ.

Hazel Ripwinkley said it all came of "knowing the Muffin Man:" and
so it did. The Bread-Giver; the Provider. It is queer they should
have made such an unconscious parable in that nonsense-play. But you
can't help making parables, do what you will.

Rosamond Kincaid had her hands full now, she had her little Stephen.

He came like a little angel of delight, in one way; the real, heart
way; but another,--the practical way of day's doing and
ordering,--he came like a little Hun, overrunning and devastating
everything.

While Rosamond had been up-stairs, and Mrs. Waters had been nursing
her, and Miss Arabel coming in and out to see that all was straight
below, it had been lovely; it was the peace of heaven.

But when Mrs. Waters--who was one of those born nurses whom
everybody who has any sort of claim sends for in all emergency of
sickness--had to pack up her valise and go to Portland, where her
niece's son was taken with rheumatic fever, and her niece had
another bleeding at the lungs; when the days grew short, and the
nights long, and the baby _would_ not settle his relations with the
solar system, but having begun his earthly career in the night-time,
kept a dead reckoning accordingly, and continued to make the
midnight hours his hours of demand and enterprise,--the nice little
systematic calculations by which the household had been regulated
fell into hopeless uncertainties.

Dorris had so many music scholars now, that she was obliged to
leave home at nine in the morning; and at night she was very tired.
It was indispensable for her and for Kenneth that dinner should be
punctual. Rosamond could not let Miss Arabel's labors of love grow
into matter-of-course service.

And then there were all the sewing and mending to do; which had not
been anything to think of when there had been plenty of time; but
which, now that the baby devoured all the minutes, and made a
houseful of work beside, began to grow threatening with inevitable
procrastinations.

[Barbara Goldthwaite, who was at home at West Hill with _her_ baby,
averred that _these_ were the angels who came to declare that time
should be no longer.]

Rosamond would not have a nursery maid; she "would not give up her
baby to anybody;" neither would she let a "kitchen girl" into her
paradisiacal realm of shining tins, and top-over cups, and white,
hemmed dishcloths.

"Let's have a companion!" said Dorris. "Let's afford her together."

When their "Christian Register" came, that very week, there was Dot
Ingraham's advertisement.

Mr. Kincaid went into the city, and round to Pilgrim Street, and
found her; and now, in this November when every machine girl in
Boston was thrown back upon her savings, or her friends, or the
public contribution, she was tucking up little short dresses for
Stephen, whom Rosamond, according to the family tradition, called
resolutely by his name, and whom she would, at five months old, put
into the freedom of frocks, "in which he could begin to feel himself
a little human being, and not a tadpole."

Dot helped in the kitchen, too; but this was a home kitchen. She
became one of themselves, for whatever there was to be done.
Especially she took triumphant care of Rosamond's stand of plants,
which, under her quickly recognized touch and tending, rushed
tumultuously into a green splendor, and even at this early winter
time, showed eager little buds of bloom, of all that could bloom.

They had books and loud reading over their work. Everything got
done, and there were leisure hours again. Dot earned four dollars a
week, and once a fortnight went home and spent a Sunday with her
mother.

All went blessedly at the Horse Shoe; but there is not a Horse Shoe
everywhere. It is always a piece of luck to find one.

Desire Ledwith knew that; so she held her peace about it for a
while, among these girls to whom Bel Bree was preaching her crusade.
All they knew was that Dot Ingraham and her machine were gone away
into a family eighteen miles from Boston.

"If _you_ find anything for me to do, Miss Ledwith, I'll do it,"
said Kate Sencerbox. "But I won't go into one of those offices, nor
off into the country for the winter. I want to keep something to
hold on to,--not run out to sea without a rope."

Desire did not propose advertising, as she had done to Dot; she
would let Kate wait a week. A week in the new condition of things
might teach her a good deal.




CHAPTER XXVI.

TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'.


There was trouble in Mrs. Frank Scherman's pretty little household.

The trouble was, it did not stay little. Baby Karen was only six
weeks old, and Marmaduke was only three years; great, splendid
fellow though he was at that, and "galumphing round,"--as his mother
said, who read nonsense to Sinsie out of "Wonderland," and the
"Looking Glass,"--upon a stick.

Of course she read nonsense, and talked nonsense,--the very happiest
and most reckless kind,--in her nursery; this bright Sin Scherman,
who "had lived on nonsense," she declared, "herself, until she was
twenty years old; and it did her good." Therefore, on physiological
principles, she fed it to her little ones. It agreed with the Saxon
constitution. There was nothing like understanding your own family
idiosyncrasies.

Everything quaint and odd came naturally to them; even their names.

Asenath: Marmaduke: Kerenhappuch.

"I didn't go about to seek or invent them," said Mrs. Scherman, with
grave, innocent eyes and lifted brows. "I didn't name myself, in the
first place; did I? Sinsie had to be Sinsie; and then--how _am_ I
accountable for the blessed luck that gave me for best friends dear
old Marmaduke Wharne and Kerenhappuch Craydocke?"

But down in the kitchen, and up in the nursery, there was
disapproval.

"It was bad enough," they said,--these orderers of household
administration,--"when there was two. And no second nurse-girl, and
no laundress!"

"If Mrs. Scherman thinks I'm going to put up with baby-clothes
slopping about all days of the week, whenever a nurse can get time
from tending, and the parlor girl havin' to accommodate and hold the
child when she gets her meals, and nobody to fetch out the dishes
and give me a chance to clear up, I can just tell her it's too
thin!"

"Ye'r a fool to stay," was the expostulation of an outside friend,
calling one day to see and condole with and exasperate the aforesaid
nurse. "When ther's places yer might have three an' a half a week,
an' a nurse for the baby separate, an' not a stitch to wash, not
even yer own things! If they was any account at all, they'd keep a
laundress!"

"I know there's places," said the aggrieved, but wary Agnes. "But
the thing is to be sure an' git 'em. And what would I do, waitin'
round?"

"Ad_ver_tiss," returned the friend. "Yer'd have heaps of 'em after
yer. It's fun to see the carriages rollin' along, one after the
other, in a hurry, and the coachmen lookin' out for the number with
ther noses turned up. An' then yer take it quite calm, yer see, an'
send 'em off agin till yer find out how many more comes; an' yer
_consider_. That's the time yer'll know yer value! I've got an
ad_ver_tiss out now; an' I've had twenty-three of 'em, beggin' and
prayin', down on ther bare knees all but, since yesterday mornin'.
I've been down to Pinyon's to-day, with my croshy-work, for a
change. Norah Moyle's there, with the rest of 'em; doin' ther little
sewin' work, an' hearin' the news, an' aggravatin' the ladies.
Yer'll see 'em come in,--betune ten an' eleven's the time, when the
cars arrives,--hot and flustered, an' not knowin' for their lives
which way to turn; an' yer talks 'em all up and down, deliberate;
an' makes 'em answer all the questions yer like, and then yer tells
'em, quite perlite, at the end, that yer don't think 'twould suit
yer expectash'ns; it's not precisely what yer was lookin' for. Yer
toss 'em over for all the world as they tosses goods on the counter.
Ah, yer can see a deal of life, that way, of a mornin'!"

Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and
small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to
be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly,
as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and
forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was
a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to
be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual
preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond
hours, and general defiance,--takes sides in the kitchen against the
family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and
particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty
of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their
breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke,
left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling
down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the
washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen,
picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an
umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him
summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a
syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped
head.

It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish
recollection,--what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the
kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of
it.

"How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?" asked Mrs. Scherman, in
the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M'Cormick,
carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful
condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead
with arnica water.

"I dicher tumber," said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the
consonant combinations that he couldn't skip, with the aspirated
'ch;' "I dicher tumber. I f'ied."

"You _what_?"

"F'ied. I icher pa'yow. On'y die tare too big!"

"Yes, indeed," said Sin, laughing. "The stairs are a great deal too
big. And little sparrows don't fly--down-stairs. They hop round, and
pick up crumbs."

"Ho I did," said Marmaduke, showing his white little front teeth in
the midst of a surrounding shine of stickiness.

"Yes. I see. Sugar. But you didn't manage that much better, either.
The trouble is, you haven't _quite_ turned into a little bird, yet.
You haven't any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to
fly with. You'll have to wait till you grow."

"I _ta'h_ wa'he. I icher pa'yow now!"

"What shall I do with this child, Frank?" asked Sin, with her grave,
funny lifting of her brows, as her husband came into the room. "He's
got hypochondriasis. He thinks he's a sparrow, and he's determined
to fly. We shall have him trying it off every possible--I mean
impossible--place in the house."

"Put him in a cage," said Mr. Scherman, with equal gravity.

"Yes, of course. That's where little house-birds belong. Duke, see
here! Little birds that live in houses _never_ fly. And they never
pick up crumbs, either, except what are put for them into their own
little dishes. They live in tiny wire rooms, fixed so that they
can't fly out. Like your nursery, with the bars across the windows,
and the gate at the door. You and Sinsie are two little birds;
mamma's sparrows. And you mustn't try to get out of your cage unless
she takes you."

"Then you're the great sparrow," put in Sinsie, coming up beside
her, laughing. "Whose sparrow are you?"

Asenath looked up at her husband.

"Yes; it's a true story, after all. You can't make up anything. It
has been all told before. We're all sparrows, Sinsie,--God's
sparrows."

"In cages?"

"Yes. Only we can't always see the wires. They are very fine. There!
That's as far as you or I can understand. Now be good little
birdies, and hop round here together till mamma comes back."

She went into her own room, to the tiniest little birdie of all,
that was just waking.

Sinsie and Marmaduke had got a new play, now. They were quite
contented to be sparrows, and chirp at each other, springing and
lighting about, from one green spot to another in the pattern of the
nursery carpet.

"I'll tell you what," said Sinsie, confidentially; "sparrows don't
have girls to interfere, do they? They live in the cages and help
themselves. I like it. I'm glad Agnes is gone."

Sinsie was four and a half; she had "talked plain" ever since she
was one; and the nonsense that her mother had talked to her being
always bright nonsense, such as she would talk to anybody on the
same subject, there was something quaint in the child's fashion of
speech and her unexpected use of words. Asenath Scherman did not
keep two dictionaries, nor pare off an idea, as she would a bit of
apple before she gave it to a child. It was noticeable how she
sharpened their little wits continually against her own without
straining them.

And there was a reflex action to this sharpening. She was fuller of
graceful little whims, of quick and keen illustrations, than ever.
Her friends who were admitted to nursery intimacies and nursery
talk, said it was ever so much better than any grown-up
dinner-tables and drawing-rooms.

"Well," she would answer, "I'm not much in the way of dinner-tables
and drawing-rooms. I just have to live right along, and what there
is of me comes out here. I rather think we'll save time and comfort
by it in the end,--Sinsie and I. She won't want so much special
taking into society by and by, before she can learn to tell one
thing from another. Frank and I, with such friends as come here in
our own fashion, will make a society for her from the beginning, as
well as we can. She will get more from us in twenty years than she
would from 'society' in two. And if I 'kept up' outside, now, for
the sake of her future, that would be the alternative? I believe
more in growing up than in coming out."

If there was a reflex action in the mental influence, how much more
in the tender and spiritual! How many a word came back into her own
heart like a dove, that she first thought of in giving it to her
child!

She sat now in her chamber bathing and dressing baby Karen; and all
the perplexities of the day,--the days or weeks, perhaps,--that had
stretched out before her, melted into a sweetness, remembering that
she herself was but one of God's sparrows, fed out of his hand; and
that all her limitations, as well as her unsuspected safeties, were
the fine wires with which He surrounded and held her in.

"He knows my cage," she thought. "He has put me here Himself, and He
will not forget me."

Frank dined down town; Asenath had her lunch of bread and butter,
and beef tea; and an egg beaten in a tumbler, with sugar and cream,
for her dessert. The children, with their biscuit and milk and baked
apple, were easily cared for. They played "sparrow" all day; Asenath
put their little bowls and spoons on the low nursery table, and left
them to "help themselves."

Honest, rough Mrs. M'Cormick fetched and carried for her, and
"cleaned up" down-stairs. Then Asenath wrote a few lines to Desire
Ledwith, told her strait, and asked if she could take a little
trouble for her, and send her some one.

Mrs. M'Cormick went round to Greenley Street, and delivered the
note.

"There!" said Desire, when she had read it, to Bel Bree who was in
the room. "The Providence mail is in, early; and this is for you."

When Bel had seen what it was, she realized suddenly that Providence
had taken her at her word. She was in for it now; here was this
thing for her to do. Her breath shortened with the thought of it, as
with a sudden plunge into water. Who could tell how it would turn
out? She had been so brave in counseling and urging others; what if
she should make a mistake of it, herself?

"She hasn't anybody; she would take Kate, maybe Kate must just go.
It won't be half a chance to try it, if I can't try it my way."

"It is a clear stage," said Desire Ledwith. "If you can act out your
little programme anywhere, you can act it at the Schermans'."

"Is it a cellar kitchen?"

Bel laughed as soon as she had asked the question. She caught
herself turning catechetical at once, after the servant-girl
fashion.

"I was thinking about Kate. But I don't wonder they inquire about
things. It's a question of home."

"Of course it is. There ought to be questions,--on both parts. Every
fair person knows _that_ is fair. Neither side ought to assume the
pure bestowal of a favor. But the one who has the home already may
be supposed to consider at least as carefully whom she will take in,
as she who comes to offer service as an equivalent. I believe it is
a cellar kitchen; at least, a basement. The house is on the lower
side; there must be good windows."

"I'll go right round for Kate, and we'll just call and see. I don't
know in the least how to begin about it when I get there. I could do
the _thing_, if I can make out the first understanding. I hope Kate
won't be very Kate-y!"

She said so to Miss Sencerbox when she found her.

"You needn't be afraid. I'm bound to astonish somebody. Impertinence
wouldn't do that. I shall strike out a new line. I'm the cook,--or
the chambermaid,--which is it? that they haven't had any of before.
I shall keep my sharp relishes for our own private table. You
might discriminate, Bel! I know I've got a kind of a pert,
snappy-sounding name,--just like the outside of me; but if you stop
to look at it, it isn't _Saucebox_, but _Sensebox_! They're related,
sometimes, and they ain't bad together; but yet, apart, they're
different."




CHAPTER XXVII.

BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM.


Mrs. Frank Scherman's front door-bell rang. Of course she had to go
down and open it herself. When she did so, she let in two girls
whose pretty faces, bright with a sort of curious expectation, met
hers in a way by which she could hardly guess their station or
errand.

She did not know them; they might be anybody's daughters, yet they
hardly looked like _technical_ "young ladies."

They stepped directly in without asking; they moved aside till she
had closed the door against the keen November wind; then Bel said,--

"We came to see what help you wanted, Mrs. Scherman. Miss Ledwith
told us."

How did Bel know so quickly that it was Mrs. Scherman? There was
something in her instant conclusion and her bright directness that
amused Asenath, while it bore its own letter of recommendation so
far.

"Do you mean you wished to inquire for yourselves,--or for either of
you?" she asked, as she led the way up-stairs.

"I must bring you up where the children are," she said. "I cannot
leave them."

They were all in the large back room, with western windows, over the
parlor. The doors through a closet passage stood open into Mrs.
Scherman's own. There were blocks, and linen picture-books, and a
red tin wagon full of small rag-dolls, about on the floor. Baby
Karen was rolled up in a blanket on the middle of a bed.

"You see, this is the family,--except Mr. Scherman. I want two good,
experienced girls for general work, and another to help me here in
the nursery. I say two for general work, because I want some things
equally divided, and others exchanged willingly upon occasion. Do
you want places for yourselves?"

She paused to repeat the question, hardly sure of the possibility.
These girls did not look much like it. There was no half-suspicious,
half-aggressive expression on their faces even yet. It was time for
it; time for her own cross-examination to begin, according to all
precedent, if they were really looking out for themselves. Why
didn't they sit up straight and firm, with their hands in their
muffs and their eyes on hers, and say with a rising inflection and
lips that moved as little as possible,--"What wages, mum?" or
"What's the conveniences--or the privileges--mum?"

Bel Bree had got her arm round little Sinsie, who had crept up to
her side inquisitively; and Kate was making a funny face over her
shoulder at Marmaduke, alternately with the pleased attentive glance
she gave to his pretty young mother and her speaking.

"Yes'm," Bel answered. "We want places. We are sewing-girls. We have
lost our work by the fire, and we were getting tired of it before.
We have made up our minds to try families. We want a real place to
live, you see. And we want to go together, so as to make our own
place. We mightn't like things just as they happened, where there
was others."

Mrs. Scherman's own face lighted up afresh. This was something that
did not happen every day. She grew cordial with a pleased surprise.
"Do you think you could? Do you know about housework, about
cooking?"

"It's very good of you to put it in that way," said Kate Sencerbox.
"We just do know _about_ it, and perhaps that's all, at present. But
we're Yankees, and we _mean_ to know."

"And you would like to experiment with me?"

"Well, it wouldn't be altogether experiment, from the very
beginning," said Bel. "I'm sure I can make good bread, and tea, and
toast, and broil chickens or steaks; I can stew up sauces, I can do
oysters. I can make a _splendid_ huckleberry pudding! We had one
every Sunday all last August."

"Where?" asked Asenath, gravely.

"In our room; Aunt Blin and I. Aunt Blin died just after the fire,"
said Bel, simply.

Asenath's gravity grew sweeter and more real; the tremulous twinkle
quieted in her eyes.

"I don't know what to answer you, exactly," she said, presently.
"This is just what we housekeepers have been saying ought to happen:
and now that it does happen, I feel afraid of taking you in. It is
very odd; but the difficulties on your side begin to come to me. I
have no doubt that on my side it would be lovely. But have you
thought about this 'real place to live' that you want? what it would
have to be? Do you think you would be contented in a kitchen? And
the washing? Our washings are so large, with all these little
children!"

Yes, it was odd. Without waiting to be catechised, or resenting
beforehand the spirit of jealous inquiry, Asenath Scherman was
frankly putting it in the heads of these unused applicants that
there might be doubts as to her service suiting them.

"I suppose we could do anything reasonable," said Kate Sencerbox.

"I wonder if it is reasonable!" said Mrs. Scherman. "Mr. Scherman
has six shirts a week, and the children's things count up fearfully,
and the ironing is nice work. I'm afraid you wouldn't think you had
any time left for living. The clothes hardly ever all come up before
Thursday morning."

"And the cooking and all are just the same those days?" asked Kate.

"Why yes, pretty nearly, except just Mondays. Monday always has to
be rather awful. But after that, we _do_ expect to live. We couldn't
hold our breaths till Thursday."

"I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere,"
said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not
meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't
straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps,
doesn't she?"

"Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I
can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes,
I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now."

Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering.

Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still
minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little
bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite
end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside
down again. Which _was_ upside down, or right side up?

She had not thought a word about big, impossible washings.

Kate spoke out at last.

"Every one brings the work of one, you see," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I wish there needn't be any nursery girl."

Mrs. Scherman lifted her eyebrows in utter amaze. The suggestion to
the ordinary Irish mind would have been, as she had already
experienced, another nurse; certainly not the dispensing with that
official altogether.

"What wages do you pay, Mrs. Scherman?" was Kate's next question. It
came, evidently in the process of a reasoning calculation; not, as
usual, with the grasping of demand.

"Four dollars to the cook. Which _is_ the cook?"

"I don't believe we know yet," answered Bel Bree, laughing in the
glee of her recovering spirits. "But I think it would probably be
me. Kate can make molasses candy, but she hasn't had the chance for
much else. And I should like to have the kitchen in my charge. I
feel responsible for the home-iness of it, for I started the plan."

With that covert suggestion and encouragement, she stopped, leaving
the lead to Kate again.

Kate Sencerbox was as earnest as a judge.

"How much to the others?" said she.

"Three dollars each."

"That's ten dollars a week. Now, if you only had Bel and me, and
paid us three or three and a half a piece, couldn't you put
out--say, five dollars' worth of fine washing? Wouldn't the nurse's
board and wages come to that? And I'd engage to help with the baby
as much as you say you get helped now."

"But you would want some time to yourself?"

"Babies can't be awake all the time. I guess I should get it. I've
never had anything but evenings, so far. The thing is, Mrs.
Scherman, if I can try this anywhere, I can try it here. I don't
suppose people have got things fixed just as they would have been if
there'd always been a home all over the house. If we go to live with
anybody, we mean to make it living _in_, not living _out_. And we
shall find out ways as we go along,--all round. If you're willing,
we are. It's Bel's idea, not mine; though she's let me take it to
myself, and do the talking. I suppose because she thought I should
be the hardest of the two to be suited. And so I am. I didn't
believe in it at first. But I begin to see into it; and I've got
interested. I'd like to work it out on this line, now. Then I shall
know."

There were not many more words after that; there did not need to be.
Mrs. Scherman engaged them to come, at once, for three dollars and a
half a week each.

"It's a kind of a kitchen gospel," said Bel Bree, as they walked up
Summit Street. "And it's got to come from the _girls_. What can the
poor ladies do, up in their nurseries, with their big houses, full
of everything, on their hands, and the servants dictating and
clearing out? They can't say their souls are their own. They can't
plan their work, or say how many they'll have to do it. The more
they have, the more they'll have to have. It ain't Mr. and Mrs.
Scherman, and those two little children,--or two and a half,--that
makes all the to-do. Every girl they get makes the dinners more, and
the Mondays heavier. Why, the family grows faster down-stairs than
up, with a nurse for every baby! Think of the tracking and
travelling, the wear and tear. Every one makes work for one, and
dirt for two. It's taking in a regiment down below, and laying the
trouble all off on to the poor little last baby up-stairs! And the
ladies don't see through it. They just keep getting another parlor
girl, or door girl, or nursery girl, and wondering that the things
don't grow easier. It's like that queer rule in arithmetic about
fractions,--where dividing and multiplying get all mixed up, and you
can't hold on to the reason why, in your mind, long enough to look
at it."

"Why didn't you go down and see the kitchen?"

"Because, how could she leave those tots to take care of themselves
while she showed us? Our minds were made up. You said just the
truth; if we can try it anywhere, we can try it there. And whatever
the kitchen is, it's only our place to begin on. We'll have it all
right, or something near it, before we've been there a fortnight.
It's only a room we take, where the work is given in to do. If we
had one anywhere else, we should expect to fix up and settle in it
according to our own notions, and why not there? We're rent free,
and paid for our work. I'm going to have things of my own; personal
property. If I want a chandelier, I'll save up and get one; only I
sha'n't want it. There's ways to contrive, Kate; and real fun doing
it."

An hour afterward, they were on their way back, with their leather
bags.

Baby Karen was asleep, and Mrs. Scherman came down-stairs to let
them in again, with Marmaduke holding to her hand, and Sinsie
hopping along behind. They all went into the kitchen together.

Mrs. McCormick had "cleared it up," so that there was at least a
surface tidiness and cheerfulness. The floor was freshly scrubbed,
the table-tops scoured down, the fire made, and the gas lighted.
Mrs. McCormick had gone home, to be ready for her own husband and
her two "boys" when they should come in from their work to their
suppers.

The kitchen was in an L; there were two windows looking out upon a
bricked yard. Bel Bree kept the points of the compass in her head.

"Those are south windows," said she. "We can have plants in them.
And it's real nice their opening out on a level."

Forward, the house ran underground. They used the front basement for
a store-room. Above the kitchen, in the L, was the dining-room. A
short, separate flight of stairs led to it; also a dumb waiter ran
up and down between china closet and kitchen pantry. Both kitchen
and dining-room were small; the L had only the width of the hall and
the additional space to where the first window opened in the western
wall.

In one corner of the kitchen were set tubs; a long cover slid over
them, and formed a sideboard. Opposite, beside the fire-place, were
sink and boiler; between the windows, a white-topped table. There
were four dark painted wooden chairs. A clock over the table, and a
rolling-towel beside the sink; green Holland window-shades; these
were the only adornments and drapery. There was a closet at each end
of the room.

"Will you go up to your room now, or wait till after tea?" asked
Mrs. Scherman.

"We might take up our things, now," said Bel, looking round at the
four chairs. "They would be in the way here, perhaps."

Kate took up her bag from the table.

"We can find the room," she said, "if you will direct us."

"Up three flights; two from the dining-room; the back chamber. You
can stop at my room as you come down, and we will think about tea.
Mr. Scherman will soon be home; and I should like to surprise him
with something very comfortable."

The girls found their way up-stairs.

The room, when they reached it, looked pleasant, though bare. The
sun had gone below the horizon, beyond the river which they could
not see; but the western light still shone in across the roofs.
There were window-seats in the two windows, uncushioned. A square of
clean, but faded carpet was laid down before the bed and reached to
the table,--simple maple-stained pine, uncovered,--that stood
beneath a looking-glass in a maple frame, between the windows. There
were three maple-stained chairs in the room. A door into a good,
deep closet stood open; there was a low grate in the chimney, unused
of course, with no fire-irons about it, and some scraps of refuse
thrown into it and left there; this was the only actual untidiness
about the room, where there was not the first touch of cosiness or
comfort. The only depth of color was in a heavy woven dark-blue and
white counterpane upon the bed.

"Now, Kate Sencerbox, shut up!" said Bel Bree, turning round upon
her, after the first comprehensive glance, as Kate came in last, and
closed the door.

Kate put her muff down on the bed, folded her hands meekly, and
looked at Bel with a mischievous air that said plainly enough "Ain't
I?" and which she would not falsify by speech.

"Yes, I know you are; but--_stay_ shut up! All this isn't as it is a
going to be,--though it's _not_ bad even now!"

Kate resolutely stayed shut up.

"You see that carpet is just put there; within this last hour, I
dare say. Look at the clean ravel in the end. They've taken away the
old, tramped one. That's a piece out of saved-up spare ends of
breadths, left after some turn-round or make-over, I know! It's
faded, and it's homely; but it's spandy clean! I sha'n't let it stay
raveled long. And I've got things. Just wait till my trunk comes. My
ottoman, I mean. That's what it turns into. Have you got a stuffed
cover to your trunk, Katie?"

Kate lifted up her eyebrows for permission to break silence.

"Of course you can, when you're asked a question. You've had time
now for second thoughts. I wasn't going to let you fly right out
with discouragements."

"It is you that flies out with taking for granteds," said Kate
Sencerbox, in a subdued monotone of quietness. "I was only going to
remark that we had got neither cellar windows, nor attic skylights
after all. I'm favorably surprised with the accommodations. I've
paid four dollars a week for a great deal worse. And I wouldn't cast
reflections by arguing objections that haven't been made, if I were
the leader of this enterprise, Miss Bree."

"Kate! That's what I call real double lock-stitch pluck! That goes
back of everything. You needn't shut up any more. Now let's come
down and see about supper."

They had pinned on linen aprons, with three-cornered bibs; such as
they wore at their machines. When they came down into Mrs.
Scherman's room, that young matron said within herself,--"I wonder
if it's real or if we're in a charade! At any rate, we'll have a
real tea in the play. They do sometimes."

"What is the nicest, and quickest, and easiest thing to get, I
wonder?" she asked of her waiting ministers. "Don't say toast. We're
so tired of toast!"

"Do you like muffins and stewed oysters?" asked Bel Bree, drawing
upon her best experience.

"Very much," Mrs. Scherman answered.

And Kate, looking sharply on, delighted herself with the guarded
astonishment that widened the lady's beautiful eyes.

"Only we have neither muffins nor oysters in the house; and the
grocery and the fish-market are down round the corner, in Selchar
Street."

"I could go for them right off. What time do you have tea?"

Really, Asenath Scherman had never acted in a charade where her cues
were so unexpected.

"I wonder if I'm getting mixed up again," she thought. "Which _is_
the cook?"

Of course a cook never would have offered to go out and order
muffins and oysters. Mrs. Scherman could not have _asked_ it of the
parlor-maid.

Kate Sencerbox relieved her.

"I'll go, Bel," she interposed. "I guess it's my place. That is, if
you like, Mrs. Scherman."

"I like it exceedingly," said Asenath, congratulating herself upon
the happy inspiration of her answer, which was not surprise nor
thanks, but cordial and pleased enough for either. "The shops are
next each other, just beyond Filbert Street. Have the things charged
to Mrs. Francis Scherman. A quart of oysters,--and how many muffins?
A dozen I think; then if there are two or three left, they'll be
nice for breakfast. They will send them up. Say that we want them
directly."

"I can bring the muffins. I suppose they'll want the oyster-can
back."

It may be a little doubtful whether Kate's spirit of supererogatory
doing would have gone so far, if it had not been for the
deliciousness of piling up the wonder. She retreated, upon the word,
magnanimously, remitting further reply; and Bel directly after
descended to her kitchen, to make the needful investigations among
saucepans and toasters.

"Don't be frightened at anything you may find," Mrs. Scherman said
to her as she went. "I won't answer for the insides of cupboards and
pans. But we will make it all right as fast as possible. You shall
have help if you need it; and at the worst, we can throw away and
get new, you know. Suppose, Bel," she added, with enchanting
confidence and accustomedness, "we were to have a cup of coffee with
the oysters? There is some real Mocha in the japanned canister in
the china closet, and there are eggs in the pantry, to clear with;
you know how? Mr. Scherman is so fond of coffee."

Bel knew how; and Bel assented. As the door closed after her, below
stairs, Mrs. Scherman caught up Sinsie into her lap, and gave her a
great congratulatory hug.

"Do you suppose it will last, little womanie? If it isn't all gone
in the morning, what comfort we'll have in keeping house and taking
care of baby!"

The daughter is so soon the "little womanie" to the mother's loving
anticipation!

Marmaduke was lustily struggling with and shouting to a tin horse
six inches long, and tipping up a cart filled with small pebbles on
the carpet. He was outside already; the housekeeping was nothing to
him, except as it had to do with the getting in of coals.

When Mr. Scherman opened the front door, the delicious aroma of
oysters and coffee saluted his chilled and hungry senses. He
wondered if there were unexpected company, and what Asenath could
have done about it. He passed the parlor door cautiously, but there
was no sound of voices. Up-stairs, all was still; the children were
in crib and cradle, and Asenath was shaking and folding little
garments,--shapes out of which the busy spirits had slidden.

He came up behind her, where she stood before the fire.

"All well, little mother?" he questioned. "Or tired to death? There
are festive odors in the house. Has anybody repented and come back
again?"

"Not a bit of it!" Sin exclaimed triumphantly, turning round and
facing him, all rosy with the loving romp she had been having just a
little while before with her babies. "Frank! I've got a pair of
Abraham's angels down-stairs! Or Mrs. Abraham's,--if she ever had
any. I don't remember that they used to send them to women much, now
I think of it, after Eve demeaned herself to entertain the old
serpent. Ah! the _babies_ came instead; that was it! Well; there is
a couple in the kitchen now, at any rate; and they're toasting and
stewing in the most E--_lys_ian manner! That's what you smell."

"Angels? Babies? What terrible ambiguity! What, or who, is stewing,
if you please, dear?"

"Muffins. No! oysters. There! you sha'n't know anything about it
till you go down to tea. But the millennium's come, and it's begun
in our house."

"I knew that, six years ago," said Frank Scherman. "There are
exactly nine hundred and ninety-four left of it. I can wait till
tea-time with the patience of the saints."




CHAPTER XXVIII.

"LIVING IN."


Desire Ledwith went over to Leicester Place with Bel Bree, when she
returned there for the first needful sorting and packing and
removing. Bel could not go alone, to risk any meeting; to put
herself, voluntarily and unprotected in the way again. Miss Ledwith
took a carriage and called for her. In that manner they could bring
away nearly all. What remained could be sent for.

Miss Smalley possessed some movables of her own, though the
furnishings in her room had been mostly Mrs. Pimminy's. There were
some things of her aunt's that Bel would like, and which she had
asked leave to bring to Mrs. Scherman's.

The light, round table, with its old fashioned slender legs and claw
feet, its red cloth, and the books and little ornaments, Bel wanted
in her sleeping-room. "Because they were Aunt Blin's," she said,
"and nothing else would seem so pleasant. She should like to take
them with her wherever she went."

The two trunks--hers and Katy's--(Bel had Aunt Blin's great
flat-topped one now, with its cushion and flounce of Turkey red; and
Kate had speedily stitched up a cover for hers to match, of cloth
that Mrs. Scherman gave her) stood one each side the chimney,--in
the recesses. A red and white patchwork quilt, done in stars, Bel's
own work before she ever came to Boston, lay folded across the foot
of the bed, in patriotic contrast with the blue,--reversing the
colors in stars and stripes. Bel had found in the attic a discarded
stairway drugget, scarlet and black, of which, the centre was worn
to threads, but the bright border still remained; and this she had
asked for and sewed around the square of neutral tinted carpet, upon
whose middle the round table stood, covering its dullness with red
again, the color of the cloth. There was plenty of bordering left,
of which she pieced a foot-mat for the floor before the
dressing-glass, and in the open grate now lay a little unlighted
pile of kindlings and coals, as carefully placed behind well
blackened bars and a facing of paper, as that in the parlor below.

"It looks nice," Bel said to Mrs. Scherman, "and we don't expect to
light it, unless one of us is sick, or something."

"Light it whenever you wish for it," Mrs. Scherman had replied. "I
am perfectly willing to trust your reasonableness for that."

So on Sunday afternoons, or of a bitter cold morning, they had their
own little blaze to sit or dress by; and it made the difference of a
continual feeling of cheeriness and comfort to them, always possible
when not immediately actual; and of a bushel or two of coal,
perhaps, in the winter's supply of fuel.

"Where were the babies of a Sunday afternoon,--and how about the
offered tending?"

This was one more place for them also; a treat and a change to
Sinsie and Marmaduke, or a perfectly safe and sweet and comfortable
resource in tending Baby Karen, who would lie content on the soft
quilts by the half hour, feeling in the blind, ignorant way that
little babies certainly do, the novelty and rest.

The household, you see, was melting into one; the spirit of home
was above and below. It was home as much as wages, that these girls
had come for; and they expected to help make it. Not that they
parted with their own individual lives and interests, either; every
one must have things that are separate; it is the way human souls
and lives are made. It would have been so with daughters, or
sisters. But in a true living, it is the individual interests that
at once aggregate and specialize, it is a putting into the common
stock that which must be distinct and real that it may be put in at
all. It was not money and goods alone, that the early Christians had
in common.

Instead of a part of their house being foreign and
distasteful,--tolerated through necessity only, that the rest might
be ministered to,--there was a region in it, now, of new, extended
family pleasure. "It was as good as building out a conservatory, or
a billiard-room," Asenath said. "It was just so much more to enjoy."

There was a little old rocking-chair, railed round till it was
almost like a basket, with just a break in the front palings to sit
into. It had a soft down cushion, covered with a damask patterned
patch of wild and divaricating device; and its rockers were short,
giving a jerk and thud if you leaned to and fro in it, like the trot
an old nurse gives a child in an ordinary, four-legged,
impracticable seat. All the better for that; the rockers were not in
the way; and all Aunt Blin had wanted of it as a sewing chair, was
to tip conveniently, as she might wish to bend and reach, to pick up
scissors or spool, or draw to herself any of those surroundings of
part, pattern, or material, which are sure, at the moment one wants
them to be on the opposite side of the table.

Bel brought this away from Leicester Place, and had it in the
kitchen. Mrs. Scherman, then seeing that there remained for Kate
only the choice of the four wooden chairs, and pleased with the cosy
expression they were causing to pervade their precincts, suggested
their making space for a short, broad lounge that she would spare to
them from an upper room which was hardly ever used. It was an old
one that she had had sent from home among some other things that
were reminiscences, when her father and mother, the second year
after her marriage, had broken up their household in New York, and
resolved on a holiday, late in life, in Europe. It was a
comfortable, shabby old thing, that she had used to curl up on to
learn her German, with the black kitten in her lap, and the tip of
its tail for a pointer. She had always meant to cover it new, but
had never had time. There was a large gray travelling shawl folded
over it now, making extra padding for back and seat, and the thick
fringe fell below, a garnishing along the front.

"Let it be," said Asenath. "I don't think you'll set the soup-kettle
or the roasting-pan down on it; and you can always shake it out
fresh and make it comfortable. It was only getting full of dust
up-stairs. There's a square pillow in the trunk-room that you can
have too, and cover with something. A five minutes' level rest is
nice, between times, I know. I wonder I never thought of it before."

How would Bel or Kate have ever got a "five minutes' level rest,"
over their machine-driving at Fillmer & Bylles? Bel had said well,
that girls and women need to work under cover; in a _home_, where
they can "rest by snatches." A mere roof is not a cover; there may
be driving afield in a great warehouse, as well as out upon a
plantation.

The last touch and achievement was more of the dun-gray carpet,
like that in their bedroom, and more of the scarlet and black
stair-border, made into a rug, which was spread down when work was
over, and rolled up under the table when dinner was to dish, or a
wash was going on. They had been with Mrs. Scherman a month before
they ventured upon that asking.

When it was finished, Sin brought her husband down after tea one
night, to look at it.

"It is the most fascinating room in the house," she said.

There was a side gas-light over the white-topped table, burning
brightly. Upon the table were work-baskets, and a volume from the
Public Library. The lounge was just turned out from the wall a
little, towards it, and opposite stood the round rocking-chair.
Cheeps, in his cage at the farther window, was asleep in a yellow
ball, his head under his wing. Bel was hanging the last dish-towel
upon a little folding-horse in the chimney corner, and they could
hear Kate singing up-stairs to a gentle clatter of the dishes that
she was putting away from the dining-room use.

"It looks as a kitchen ought to," said Mr. Scherman. "As my
grandmother's used to look; as if all the house-comfort came from
it."

"It isn't a place to forbid children out of, is it?" asked Asenath.

"I should think the only condition would be their own best
behavior," returned her husband.

"They're almost always good down here," said Bel. "Children like to
be where things are doing. They always feel put away, out of the
good times, I think, in a nursery."

"My housekeeping is all turning round on a new pivot," said Sin to
Frank, after they were seated again up-stairs. "Don't take up the
'Skelligs' yet; I want to tell you. If I thought the pivot would
really _stay_, there are two or three more things I should do. And
one of them is,--I'd have the nursery--a day-nursery--down-stairs;
that is, if I could coax you into it."

"It seems the new pivot is two very large 'ifs,'" said Frank,
laughing. "And not much space to turn in, either. Would you take the
cellar, or build out? And if so, where?"

"I'd take the dining-room, Frank; and eat in the back parlor."

"I wish you would. I don't like dining-rooms. I was brought up to a
back parlor."

"You do? You don't? You were? Why, Frank, I thought you'd hate it,"
cried Asenath, pouring forth her exclamations all in a heap, and
coming round to lean upon his shoulder. "I wish I'd told you before!
Just think of those south dining-room windows that they'll have the
good of all the forenoon, and that all we do with is to shade them
down at dinner-time! And the horse-chestnut tree, and the
grape-vines, making it green and pleasant, by and by! And the saving
of going over the stairs, and the times one of the girls might help
me when I _couldn't_ ring her away up to my room; and the tending of
table, with baby only to be looked after in here. Why, I should sit
here, myself, mornings, always; and everything would be all together
and the up-stairs work,--it would be better than two nurse-girls to
have it so!"

"Then why not have it so right off? The more you turn on your pivot,
the smoother it gets, you know. And the more nicely you balance and
concentrate, the longer your machine will last."

Asenath lay awake late, and woke early, that night and the next
morning, "planning."

When Frank saw a certain wide, intent, shining, "don't-speak-to-me"
look in her eyes, he always knew that she was "planning." And he had
found that out of her plans almost always resulted some charming
novelty, at least, that gave one the feeling of beginning life over
again; if it were only the putting of his bureau on the other side
of the room, so that he started the wrong way for a few days,
whenever he wanted to get a clean collar; or the setting the
bedstead with side instead of head to the wall; issuing in
delightful bewilderments of mind, when wakened suddenly and asked to
find a match or turn up the dressing-room gas in the night, to meet
some emergency of the baby's.

This time the development was a very busy Friday forenoon; in which
the silver rubbing was omitted, and the dinner preparations put
off,--the man who came for "chores" detained for heavy lifting,--the
large dining-table turned up on edge and rolled into the back
parlor, the sideboard brought in and put in the place of a sofa,
which was wheeled to an obtuse angle with the fire-place,--nine
square yards of gray drugget, with a black Etruscan border, sent up
by Mr. Scherman from Lovejoy's, and tacked carefully down by seam
and stripe, under Asenath's personal direction; cradle,
rocking-horse, baby-house, tin carts and picture-books removed from
the nursery and arranged in the new quarters,--the children
themselves following back and forth untiringly with their
one-foot-foremost hop over the stairs, and their hands clasping the
rods of the balusters,--some little shabby treasure always hugged
in the spare arm, chairs and crickets, and the low table suited to
their baby-chairs, at which they played and ate, transferred also;
until Asenath stood with a sudden sadness in the deserted chamber,
reduced to the regular bedroom furnishings, and looking dead and
bleak with the little life gone out of it.

But the warm south sun was beaming full into the pretty room below,
where the small possessors of a whole new, beautiful world were
chattering and dancing with delight; and up here, by and by, the
western shine would come to meet them at their bedtime, and the new
moon and the star-twinkle would peep in upon their sleep.

With her own hands, Asenath made the room as fresh and nice as could
be; put little frilled covers over the pillows of the low bed, and
on the half-high bureau top; brought in and set upon the middle of
this last a slender vase from her own table, with a tea-rose in it,
and said to herself when all was done,--

"How sweet and still it will be for them to come up to, after all!
It _isn't_ nice for children to be put to sleep in the midst of the
whole day's muss!"

The final thing was done the next morning. The carpenter came and
put a little gate across the head of the short stairway which would
now only be used as required between play-room and kitchen; the back
stairway of the main house giving equal access on the other side to
the parlor dining-room. China closet and dumb waiter were luckily in
that angle, also.

A second little railed gate barred baby trespass into the halls. The
sparrows were caged again.

"What would you have done if they hadn't been?" asked Hazel
Ripwinkley, speaking of the china closet and dumb waiter happening
to be just as they were. She had come over one morning with Miss
Craydocke, for a nursery visit and to see the new arrangements.

"What should we have done if anything hadn't been?" asked Asenath,
in return. "Everything always has been, somehow, in my life. I don't
believe we have anything to do with the 'ifs' way back, do you, Miss
Hapsie? We couldn't stop short of the 'if' out of which we came into
the world,--or the world came out of darkness! I think that's the
very beauty of living."

"The very everlasting livingness," said Miss Hapsie. "We don't want
to see the strings by which the earths and moons are hung up; nor,
any more, the threads that hold our little daily possibilities."

Asenath had other visitors, sometimes, with whom it was not so easy
to strike the key-note of things.

Glossy Megilp and her mother had come home from Europe. They and the
Ledwiths were in apartments in one of the great "Babulous" hotels,
as Sin called them, with a mingling of idea and etymology.

"Good places enough," she said, "for the prologue and the epilogue
of life; but not for the blessed meanwhile; for the acting of all
the dear heart and home parts."

The two families had managed very well by taking two small "suites"
and making a common parlor; thus bestowing themselves in one room
less than they could possibly have done apart. They were very
comfortable and content, made economical breakfasts and teas
together, dined at the café, and had long forenoons in which to run
about and look in upon their friends.

Glossy had always "cultivated" Asenath Scherman for though that
young dame lived at present a very retired and domestic life, Miss
Megilp was quite aware that she _might_ come out, and in precisely
the right place, at any minute she chose; and meanwhile it was
exceedingly suitable to know her well in this same intimate
privilege of domesticity.

Glossy Megilp was very polite; but she did not believe in the new
order of things; and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth showed
it. Mrs. Megilp admired; thought it lovely for Asenath _just now_;
but of course not a thing to count upon, or to expect generally. In
short, they treated it all as a whim; a coincidence of whims.
Asenath, although she would not trouble herself about the "ifs away
back," had a spirit of looking forward which impelled her to argue
against and clear away prospective ones.

"Bad things have lasted long enough," she said; "I don't see why the
good ones should not, when once they have begun."

"They won't begin; one swallow never makes a summer. This has
happened to you, but it is absolutely exceptional; it will never be
pandemic," said Mrs. Megilp, who was fond of picking up little
knowing terms of speech, and delivering herself of them at her
earliest subsequent convenience.

"'Never' is the only really imposing word in the language," said
Asenath, innocently. "I don't believe either you or I quite
understand it. But I fancy everything begins with exceptions, and
happens in spots,--from the settling of a continent to the doing up
of back-hair in new fashions. I shouldn't wonder if it were an
excellent way to take life, to make it as exceptional as you can, in
all unexceptionable directions. To help to thicken up the good
spots till the world gets confluent with them. I suppose that is
what is meant by making one's mark in it, don't you?"

Mrs. Megilp headed about, as if in the turn the talk had taken she
suddenly found no thoroughfare; and asked Asenath if she had been to
hear Rubinstein.

Of course it was not in talk only, that--up-stairs or
down-stairs--the exceptional household found its difficulties. It
was not all pleasant arranging and contriving for an undeviating
"living happy ever after."

There were days now and then when the baby fretted, or lost her nap,
and somebody had to hold her nearly all the time; when the door-bell
rang as if with a continuous and concerted intent of malice. Stormy
Mondays happened when clothes would not dry, entailing Tuesdays and
Wednesdays and Thursdays of interrupted and irregular service
elsewhere.

If Asenath Scherman's real life had been anywhere but in her home
and with her children,--if it had consisted in being dressed in
train-skirt and panier, lace sleeves and bracelets, with hair in a
result of hour-long elaboration, at twelve o'clock; or of being out
making calls in high street toilet from that time until two; or if
her strength had had to be reserved for and repaired after evening
parties; if family care had been merely the constantly increasing
friction which the whole study of the art of living must be to
reduce and evade, that the real purpose and desire might sweep on
unimpeded,--she would soon have given up her experiment in despair.

Or if, on the other part, there had been a household below,
struggling continually to escape the necessity it was paid to
meet, that it might get to its own separate interests and
"privileges,"--if it had been utterly foreign and unsympathetic in
idea and perception, only watchful that no "hand's turn" should be
required of it beyond those set down in the bond,--resenting every
occurrence, however unavoidable, which changed or modified the day's
ordering,--there would speedily have come the old story of worry,
discontent, unreliance, disruption.

But Asenath's heart was with her little ones; she went back into her
own childhood with and for them, bringing out of it and living over
again all its bright, blessed little ways.

"She would be grown up again," she said, "by and by, when they
were."

She was keeping herself winsomely gay and fresh against the
time,--laying up treasure in the kingdom of all sweet harmonies
and divine intents, that need not be banished beyond the
grave,--although of that she never thought. It would come by
and by, for her reward.

She played with Sinsie in her baby-house; she did over again, with
her, in little, the things she was doing on not so very much larger
scale, for actual every day. She invented plays for Marmaduke which
kept the little man in him busy and satisfied. She collected,
eagerly, all treasures of small song and story and picture, to help
build the world of imagination into which all child-life must open
out.

As for Baby Karen, she was, for the most part, only manifest as one
of those little embodiments that are but given and grown out of such
loyal and happy motherhood. She was a real baby,--not a little
interloping animal. She was never nursed or tended in a hurry.
Babies blossom, as plants do, under the tender touch.

Kate Sencerbox, or Bel Bree, was glad to come into this nest-warm
pleasantness, when the mother must leave it for a while. It was not
an irksomeness flung by, like a tangled skein, for somebody else to
tug at and unravel; it was a joy in running order.

When the hard Monday came, or the baby had her little tribulations,
or it took a good tithe of the time to run and tell callers that
Mrs. Scherman was "very much engaged"--(why can't it be the fashion
to put those messages out upon the door-knob, or to tie it up
with--a silk duster, or a knot of tape?)--Kate or Bel would look one
at another and say, as they began with saying,--"Now, shut up!" It
was an understood thing that they were not to "fly out with
discouragements."

And nobody knows how many things would straighten themselves if that
could only be made the law of the land.

On Wednesday evenings, Mrs. Scherman always managed it that they
should both go to Desire Ledwith's, for the Read-and-Talk.

You may say Jerusalem is not taken yet, after all; there are plenty
of "hard places," where girls like Kate Sencerbox and Bel Bree would
not stay a week; there are hundreds of women, heads of houses, who
would not be bothered with so much superfluous intelligence,--with
refinements so nearly on a level with their own.

Granted: but it is the first steps that cost. Do you not think--do
you not _know_--that a real good, planted in the world,--in social
living,--_must_ spread, from point to point where the circumstance
is ready, where it is the "next thing?" If you do not believe this,
you do not practically believe in the kingdom ever coming at all.

There is a rotation of crops in living and in communities, as well
as in the order of vegetation of secret seeds that lie in the
earth's bosom.

We shall not always be rank with noisome weeds and thistles; here
and there, the better thought is swelling toward the germination;
the cotyledons of a fairer hope are rising through the mould.




CHAPTER XXIX.

WINTERGREEN.


To tell of what has been happening with Sylvie Argenter's thread of
our story, we must go back some weeks and pages to the time just
after the great fire.

As it was with the spread of the conflagration itself, so it proved
also with the results,--of loss, and deprivation, and change. Many
seemed at first to stand safely away out on the margin, mere
lookers-on, to whom presently, with more or less direct advance, the
great red wave of ruin reached, touching, scorching, consuming.

It was a week afterward that Sylvie Argenter learned that the
Manufacturers' Insurance Company, in which her mother had, at her
persuasion, invested the little actual, tangible remnant of her
property, had found itself swallowed up in its enormous debt; must
reorganize, begin again, with fresh capital and new stockholders.

They had nothing to reinvest. The money in the Continental Bank
would just about last through the winter, paying the seven dollars a
week for Mrs. Argenter, and spending as nearly nothing for other
things as possible. Unless something came from Mr. Farron Saftleigh
before the spring, that would be the end.

Thus far they had heard nothing from these zealous friends since
they had parted from them at Sharon, except one sentimental letter
from Mrs. Farron Saftleigh to Mrs. Argenter, written from Newport in
September.

Early in December, another just such missive came this time from
Denver City. Not a word of business; a pure woman's letter, as Mrs.
Farron Saftleigh chose to rank a woman's thought and sympathy;
nothing practical, nothing that had to do with coarse topics of bond
and scrip; taking the common essentials of life for granted,
referring to the inignorable catastrophe of the fire as a grand
elemental phenomenon and spectacle, and soaring easily away and
beyond all fact and literalness, into the tender vague, the rare
empyrean.

Mrs. Argenter read it over and over, and wished plaintively that she
could go out to Denver, and be near her friend. She should like a
new place; and such appreciation and affection were not be met with
everywhere, or often in a lifetime.

Sylvie read the letter once, and had great necessity of
self-restraint not to toss it contemptuously and indignantly into
the fire.

She made up her mind to one thing, at least; that if, at the end of
the six months, nothing were heard from Mr. Saftleigh himself, she
would write to him upon her own responsibility, and demand some
intelligence as to her mother's investments in the Latterend and
Donnowhair road, the reason why a dividend was not forthcoming, and
a statement in regard to actual or probable sales of land, which he
had given them reason to expect would before that time have been
made.

One afternoon she had gone down with Desire and Hazel among the
shops; Desire and the Ripwinkleys were very busy about Christmas;
they had ever so many "notches to fill in" in their rather mixed up
and mutable memoranda. Sylvie only accompanied them as far as Winter
Street corner, where she had to buy some peach-colored double-zephyr
for her mother; then she bade them good-by, saying that two were bad
enough dragging each other about with their two shopping lists, but
that a third would extinguish fatally both time and space and taking
her little parcel in her hand, and wondering how many more such she
could ever buy, she returned home over the long hill alone. So it
happened that on reaching Greenley Street, she had quite to herself
a surprise and pleasure which she found there.

She went straight to the gray room first of all.

Mrs. Argenter was asleep on the low sofa near the fire, her crochet
stripe-work fallen by her side upon the carpet, her book laid face
down with open leaves upon the cushion.

Sylvie passed softly into her own chamber, took off her outside
things, and returned with careful steps through her mother's room to
the hall, and into the library, to find a book which she wanted.

On the table, at the side which had come of late to be considered
hers, lay an express parcel directed to herself. She knew the
writing,--the capital "S" made with a quick, upward, slanting line,
and finished with a swell and curl upon itself like a portly figure
"5" with the top-pennant left off; the round sweep after final
letters,--the "t's" crossed backward from their roots, and the
stroke stopped short like a little rocket just in poise of bursting.
She knew it all by heart, though she had never received but one
scrap of it before,--the card that had been tied to the ivy-plant,
with Rodney Sherrett's name and compliments.

She had heard nothing now of Rodney for two months. She was glad to
be alone to wonder at this, to open it with fingers that trembled,
to see what he could possibly have put into it for her.

Within the brown wrapper was a square white box. Up in the corner
of its cover was a line of writing in the same hand; the letters
very small, and a delicate dash drawn under them. How neatly special
it looked!

"A message from the woods for 'Sylvia.'"

She lifted it off, as if she were lifting it from over a thought
that it concealed, a something within all, that waited for her to
see, to know.

Inside,--well, the thought was lovely!

It was a mid-winter wreath; a wreath of things that wait in the
heart of the woodland for the spring; over which the snows slowly
gather, keeping them like a secret which must not yet be told, but
which peeps green and fresh and full of life at every melting, in
soft sunny weather, such as comes by spells beforehand; that must
have been gathered by somebody who knew the hidden places and had
marked them long ago.

It was made of clusters, here and there, of the glossy daphne-like
wintergreen, and most delicate, tiny, feathery plumes of
princess-pine; of stout, brave, constant little shield-ferns and
spires of slender, fine-notched spleenwort, such as thrust
themselves up from rough rock-crevices and tell what life is, that
though the great stones are rolled against the doors of its
sepulchre, yet finds its way from the heart of things, somehow, to
the light. Mitchella vines, with thread-like, wandering stems, and
here and there a gleaming scarlet berry among small, round,
close-lying waxy leaves; breaths of silvery moss, like a frosty
vapor; these flung a grace of lightness over the closer garlanding,
and the whole lay upon a bed of exquisitely curled and laminated
soft gray lichen.

A message. Yes, it was a simple thing, an unostentatious
remembrance; no breaking, surely, of his father's conditions. Rodney
loyally kept away and manfully stuck to his business, but every
spire and frond and leaf of green in this winter wreath shed off the
secret, magnetic meaning with which it was charged. Heart-light
flowed from them, and touching the responsive sensitivity, made
photographs that pictured the whole story. It was a fuller telling
of what the star-leaved ferns had told before.

Rodney was not to "offer himself" to Sylvie Argenter till the two
years were over; he was to let her have her life and its chances; he
was to prove himself, and show that he could earn and keep a little
money; he was to lay by two thousand dollars. This was what he had
undertaken to do. His father thought he had a right to demand these
two years, even extending beyond the term of legal freedom, to
offset the half-dozen of boyish, heedless extravagance, before he
should put money into his son's hands to begin responsible work
with, or consent approvingly to his making of what might be only a
youthful attraction, a tie to bind him solemnly and unalterably for
life.

But the very stones cry out. The meaning that is repressed from
speech intensifies in all that is permitted. You may keep two
persons from being nominally "engaged," but you cannot keep two
hearts, by any mere silence, from finding each other out; and the
inward betrothal in which they trust and wait,--that is the most
beautiful time of all. The blessedness of acknowledgment, when it
comes, is the blessedness of owning and looking back together upon
what has already been.

Sylvie made a space for the white box upon a broad old bureau-top in
her room. She put its cover on again over the message in green
cipher; she would only care to look at it on purpose, and once in a
while; she would not keep it out to the fading light and soiling
touch of every day. She spread across the cover itself and its
written sentence her last remaining broidered and laced
handkerchief. The wreath would dry, she knew; it must lose its first
glossy freshness with which it had come from under the snows; but it
should dry there where Rodney put it, and not a leaf should fall out
of it and be lost.

She was happier in these subtle signs that revealed inward relation
than she would have been just now in an outspokenness that demanded
present, definite answer and acceptance of outward tie. It might
come to be: who could tell? But if she had been asked now to let it
be, there would have been her troubles to give, with her affection.
How could she burden anybody doubly? How could she fling all her
needs and anxieties into the life of one she cared for?

There was a great deal for Sylvie to do between now and any
marriage. Her worry soon came back upon her with a dim fear, as the
days passed on, touching the very secret hope and consciousness that
she was happy in. What might come to be her plain duty, now, very
shortly? Something, perhaps, that would change it all; that would
make it seem strange and unsuitable for Rodney Sherrett ever to
interpret that fair message into words. Something that would put
social distance between them.

Her mother, above all, must be cared for; and her mother's money was
so nearly gone!

Desire Ledwith was kind, but she must not live on anybody's
kindness. As soon as she possibly could, she must find something to
do. There must be no delay, no lingering, after the little need
there was of her here now, should cease. Every day of willing
waiting would be a day of dishonorable dependence.

It was now three months since Mrs. Froke had gone away; and letters
from her brought the good tidings of successful surgical treatment
and a rapid gaining of strength. She might soon be able to come
back. Sylvie knew that Desire could either continue to contrive work
for her a while longer, or spare her to other and more full
employment, could such be found. She watched the "Transcript" list
of "Wants," and wished there might be a "Want" made expressly for
her.

How many anxious eyes scan those columns through with a like
longing, every night!

If she could get copying to do,--if she could obtain a situation
in the State House, that paradise of well paid female scribes!
If she could even learn to set up type, and be employed in a
printing-office? If there were any chance in a library? Even work of
this sort would take her away from her mother in the daytime; she
would have to provide some attendance for her. She must furnish her
room nicely, wherever it was; that she could do from the remnants of
their household possessions stored at Dorbury; and her mother must
have a delicate little dinner every day. For breakfast and tea--she
could see to those before and after work; and her own dinners could
be anything,--anywhere. She must get a cheap rooms where some tidy
lodging woman would do what was needful; and that would take,--oh,
dear! she _couldn't_ say less than six or seven dollars a week, and
where were food and clothes to come from? At any rate, she must
begin before their present resources were utterly exhausted, or what
would become of her mother's cream, and fruit, and beef-tea?

Mingled with all her troubled and often-reviewed calculations, would
intrude now and then the thought,--shouldn't she have to be willing
to wear out and grow ugly, with hard work and insufficient
nourishing? And she would have so liked to keep fresh and pretty for
the time that might have come!

In the days when these things were keeping her anxious, the winter
wreath was also slowly turning dry.

She found herself hemmed in and headed at every turn by the pitiless
hedge and ditch of circumstance, at which girls and women in our
time have to chafe and wait; and from which there seems to be no way
out. Yet there are ways out from this, as from all things. One
way--the way of thorough womanly home-helpfulness--was not clear to
her; there are many to whom it is not clear. Yet if those to whom it
is, or might be, would take it,--if those who might give it, in many
forms, _would give_,--who knows what relief and loosening would come
to others in the hard jostle and press?

There is another way out of all puzzle and perplexity and hardness;
it is the Lord's special way for each one, that we cannot foresee,
and that we never know until it comes. Then we discern that there
has never been impossibility; that all things are open before his
eyes; and that there is no temptation,--no trying of us,--to which
He will not provide some end or escape.

In the first week of January, Sylvie acted upon her resolve of
writing to Mr. Farron Saftleigh. She asked brief and direct
questions; told him that she was obliged to request an answer
without the least delay; and begged that he would render them a
clear statement of all their affairs. She reminded him that he had
_told_ them that he would be responsible for their receiving a
dividend of at least four per cent, at the end of the six months.

Mr. Farron Saftleigh "told" people a great many things in his
genial, exhilarating business talks, which he was a great deal too
wise ever to put down on paper.

Sylvie waited ten days; a fortnight; three weeks; no answer came.
Mr. Farron Saftleigh had simply destroyed the letter, of no
consequence at all as coming from a person not primarily concerned
or authorized, and set off from Denver City the same day for a
business visit to San Francisco.

Sylvie saw the plain fact; that they were penniless. And this could
not be told to her mother.

She went to Desire Ledwith, and asked her what she could do.

"I would go into a household anywhere, as Dot Ingraham and Bel Bree
have done, to earn board and wages, and spend my money for my
mother; but I can't leave her. And there's no sewing work to get,
even if I could do it at night and in honest spare time. I know, as
it is, that my service isn't worth what you give me in return, and
of course I cannot stay here any longer now."

"Of course you can stay where God puts you, dear," answered Desire
Ledwith. "Let your side of it alone for a minute, and think of mine.
If you were in my place,--trying to live as one of the _large
household_, remember, and looking for your opportunities,--what
would you say,--what would you plainly hear said to you,--about
this?"

Sylvie was silent.

"Tell me truly, Sylvie. Put it into words. What would it be? What
would you hear?"

"Just what you do, I suppose," said Sylvie, slowly "But I _don't_
hear it on my side. My part doesn't seem to chord."

"Your part just pauses. There are no notes written just here, in
your score. Your part is to wait. Think, and see if it isn't. The
Dakie Thaynes are going out West again. Mr. Thayne knows about
lands, and such things. He would do something, and let you know. A
real business man would make this Saftleigh fellow afraid."

The Thaynes--Mrs. Dakie Thayne is our dear little old friend Ruth
Holabird, you know--had been visiting in Boston; staying partly
here, and partly at Mrs. Frank Scherman's. At Asenath's they were
real "comfort-friends;" Asenath had the faculty of gathering only
such about her. She felt no necessity, with them, for grand, late
dinners, or any show; there was no trouble or complication in her
household because of them. Ruth insisted upon the care of her own
room; it was like the "coöperative times" at Westover. Mrs. Scherman
said it was wonderful, when your links were with the right people,
how simple you could make your art of living, you could actually be
"quite Holabird-y," even in Boston! But this digresses.

"I shall speak to Mr. Thayne about it," said Desire. "And now, dear,
if you could just mark these towels this morning?"

Sylvie sat marking the towels, and Desire passed to and fro,
gathering things which were to go to Neighbor Street in the
afternoon.

"Do you see," she said, stopping behind Sylvie a while after, and
putting her fingers upon her hair with a caressing little
touch,--"the sun has got round from the east to the south. It shines
into this window now. And you have been keeping quiet, just doing
your own little work of the moment. The world is all alive, and
changing. Things are working--away up in the heavens--for us all.
When people don't know which way to turn, it is very often good not
to turn at all; if they are _driven_, they do know. Wait till you
are driven, or see; you will be shown, one way or the other. It is
almost always when things are all blocked up and impossible, that a
happening comes. It has to. A dead block can't last, any more than a
vacuum. If you are sure you are looking and ready, that is all you
need. God is turning the world round all the time."

Desire did not say one word about the ninety-eight dollars which lay
in one of the locked drawers of her writing desk, in precisely the
shape in which every two or three weeks she had let Sylvie put the
money into her hands. There would be a right time for that. She
would force nothing. Sylvie would come near enough, yet, for that
perfect understanding in which those bits of stamped paper would
cease to be terrible between their hands, _either_ way.




CHAPTER XXX.

NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY.


Rodney Sherrett had heard of the Argenters' losses by the fire; what
would have been the good of his correspondence with Aunt Euphrasia,
and how would she have expected to keep him pacified up in
Arlesbury, if he could not get, regularly, all she knew? Of course
he ferreted out of her, likewise, the rest of the business, as fast
as she heard it.

"It's really a dreadful thing to be so confided in, all round!" she
said to Desire Ledwith, when they had been talking one morning.
"People don't know half the ways in which everything that gets
poured into my mind concerns everything else. As an intelligent
human being, to say nothing of sympathies, I _can't_ act as if they
weren't there. I feel like a kind of Judas with a bag of secrets to
keep, and playing the traitor with every one of them!"

"What a nice world it would be if there were only plenty more just
such Judases to carry the bags!" Desire answered, buttoning on her
Astrachan collar, and picking up her muff to go.

Whereupon five minutes after, the amiable traitress was seated at
her writing-desk replying to Rodney's last imperative inquiry, and
telling him, under protest, as something he could not possibly help,
or have to do with, the further misfortune of Sylvie and her mother.

Mr. Dakie Thayne had honestly expressed his conviction to Miss
Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith, that the Donnowhair business was an
irresponsible, loose speculation. He said that he had heard of this
Farron Saftleigh and his schemes; that he might frighten him into
some sort of small restitution, and that he would look into the
title of the lands for Mrs. Argenter; but that the value of these
fell of course, with the railroad shares; and the railroad was, at
present, at any rate, mere moonshine; stopped short, probably, in
the woods somewhere, waiting for the country to be settled up beyond
Latterend.

"Am I bound by my promise against such a time as this?" Rodney wrote
back to Aunt Euphrasia. "Can't I let Sylvie know, at least, that I
am working for her, and that if she will say so, I will be her
mother's son? I could get a little house here in Arlesbury, for a
hundred dollars a year. I am earning fifteen hundred now, and I
shall save my this year's thousand. I shall not need any larger
putting into business. I don't care for it. I shall work my way up
here. I believe I am better off with an income that I can clearly
see through, than with one which sits loose enough around my
imagination to let me take notions. Can't you stretch your
discretionary power? Don't you see my father couldn't but consent?"

The motive had touched Rodney Sherrett's love and manliness, just as
this fine manoeuvrer,--pulling wires whose ends laid hold of
character, not circumstance,--believed and meant. It had only added
to the strength and loyalty of his purpose. She had looked deeper
than a mere word-faithfulness in communicating to him what another
might have deemed it wiser not to let him know. She thought he had a
right to the motives that were made for him. But when a month would
take this question of his abroad and bring back an answer, Miss
Euphrasia would not force beyond the letter any interpretation of
provisional authority which her brother-in-law had deputed. She
would only draw herself closer to Sylvie in all possible confidence
and friendliness. She would only move her to acquiescence yet a
little longer in what her friends offered and urged. She represented
to her that they must at least wait to hear from Mr. Thayne; there
might be something coming from the West; and it would be cruel to
hurry her mother into a life which could not but afflict her, until
an absolute necessity should be upon them.

She bade Rodney be patient yet a few weeks more, and to leave it to
her to write to his father. She did write: but she also put Rodney's
letter in.

"Things which _are_ might as well, and more truly, be taken into
account, and put in their proper tense," she urged, to Mr. Sherrett.
"There is a bond between these two lives which neither you nor I
have the making or the timing of. It will assert itself; it will
modify everything. This is just what the Lord has given Rodney to
do. It is not your plan, or authority, but this in his heart, which
has set him to work, and made him save his money. Why not let them
begin to live the life while it is yet alive? It wears by waiting;
it cannot help it. You must not expect a miracle of your boy; you
must take the motive while it is fresh, and let it work in God's
way. The power is there; but you must let the wheels be put in gear.
Simply, I advise you to permit the engagement, and the marriage. If
you do not, I think you will rob them of a part of their real
history which they have a right to. Marriage is a making of life
together; not a taking of it after it is made."

It was February when this letter was sent out.

One day in the middle of the month, Desire Ledwith, Hazel
Ripwinkley, and Sylvie had business with Luclarion in Neighbor
Street. There was work to carry; a little basket of things for the
fine laundry; some bakery orders to give. There was always Luclarion
herself to see. Just now, besides and especially, they were all
interested in Ray Ingraham's rooms that were preparing in the next
house to the Neighbors; a house which Mr. Geoffrey and others had
bought, enlarged, and built up; fitting it in comfortable suites for
housekeeping, at rents of from twenty-five to thirty dollars a
month, each. They were as complete and substantial in all their
appointments as apartments as the Commonwealth or the Berkeley;
there was only no magnificence, and there was no "locality" to pay
for. The locality was to be ministered to and redeemed, by the very
presence of this growth of pure and pleasant and honorable living in
its midst. For the most part, those who took up an abiding here had
enough of the generous human sense in them to account it a
satisfaction so to contribute themselves; for the rest, there was a
sprinkling of decent people, who were glad to get good homes cheap
in the heart of a dear city; and the public, Christian intent of the
movement sheltered and countenanced them with its chivalrous
respectability.

Frank Sunderline and Ray were to live here for a year; they were to
be married the first of March. Frank had said that Ray would have to
manage him and the Bakery too, and Ray was prepared to fulfill both
obligations.

She was going to carry out here, with Luclarion Grapp, her idea of
public supply for the chief staple of food. They were going to try a
manufacture of breadstuffs and cakestuffs, on real home principles,
by real domestic receipts. They were going to have sale shops in
different quarters,--at the South and West ends. Already their
laundry sustained itself by doing excellent work at moderate prices;
why should they not, in still another way meet and play into the
movement of the time for simplifying it, and making household
routine more independent?

"Why shouldn't there be," Ray said, with appetizing emphasis, "a
place to buy _cup_ cake, and _composition_ cake, and _sponge_ cake,
tender and rich, made with eggs instead of ammonia? Why shouldn't
there be pies with sweet butter-crust crisp and good like mother's,
and nice wholesome little puddings? Everybody knew that since the
war, when the confectioners began to economize in their materials
and double their prices at the same time, there was nothing fit to
buy and call cake in the city. Why shouldn't somebody begin again,
honest? And here, where they didn't count upon outrageous profits,
why couldn't it be as well as not? When there was a good thing to be
had in one place, other places would have to keep up. It would make
a difference everywhere, sooner or later."

"And all these girls to be learning a business that they could set
up anywhere!" said Hazel Ripwinkley. "Everybody eats! Just a new
thing, if it's only new trash, sells for a while; and these new,
old-fashioned, grandmother's cupboard things,--why, people would
just _swarm_ after them! Cooks never knew how, and ladies
didn't have time. Don't forget, Luclarion, the bright yellow ginger
pound-cake that we used to have up at Homesworth! Everything
was so good at Homesworth--the place was named out of comforts!
Why don't you call it the Homesworth Bakery? That would be
double-an-tender,--eh, Lukey!"

Marion Kent made a beautiful silk quilt for Ray Ingraham, out of her
sea-green and buff dresses, and had given it to her for a
wedding-present. For the one only time as she did so, she spoke her
heart out upon that which they had both perfectly understood, but
had never alluded to.

"You know, Ray, just as I do, what might have been, and I want you
to know that I'm contented, and there isn't a grudge in my heart.
You and Frank have both been too much to me for that. I can see how
it was, though. It was a hand's turn once. But I went my way and you
kept quietly on. It was the real woman, not the sham one, that he
wanted for a wife. It doesn't trouble me now; it's all right; and
when it might have troubled me, it didn't add a straw's weight. It
fell right off from me. You can't suffer _all through_ with more
than one thing; when you were engaged, I had my load to bear. I knew
I had forfeited everything; what difference did one part make more
than another? It was what I had let go _out of the world_, Ray, that
made the whole world a prison and a punishment. I couldn't have
taken a happiness, if it had come to me. All I wanted was work and
forgiveness."

"Dear Marion, how certainly you must know you are forgiven, by the
spirit that is in you! And for happiness, dear, there is a Forever
that is full of it! I _don't_ think it is any one thing,--not even
any one marrying."

So the two kissed each other, and went down into the other
house--Luclarion's.

That had been only a few days ago, and Ray had shown the quilt, so
rich and lustrous, and delicate with beautiful shellwork
stitchery,--to the young girls this afternoon.

She showed the quilt with loving pride and praise, but the story of
it she kept in her heart, among her prayers. Frank Sunderline never
knew more than the fair fabric and color, and the name of the giver,
told him. Frank Sunderline scarcely knew so much as these two women
did, of the unanalyzed secrets of his own life.

Luclarion waited till all this was over, and Desire Ledwith had
come back from Ray Ingraham's rooms to hers, leaving Hazel and
Sylvie among the fascinations of new crockery and bridal tin pans,
before she said anything about a very sad and important thing she
had to tell her and consult about. She took her into her own little
sitting-room to hear the story, and then up-stairs, to see the woman
of whom the story had to be told.

"It was Mr. Tipps, the milkman, came to me yesterday with it all,"
said Luclarion. "He's a good soul, Tipps; as clever as ever was. He
was just in on his early rounds, at four o'clock in the morning,--an
awful blustering, cold night, night before last was,--and he was
coming by Graves Alley, when he heard a queer kind of crazy howling
down there out of sight. He wouldn't have minded it, I suppose, for
there's always drunken noise enough about in those places, but it
was a woman's voice, and a baby's crying was mixed up with it. So he
just flung his reins down over his horse's back, and jumped off his
wagon, and ran down. It was this girl,--Mary Moxall her name is, and
Mocks-all it ought to be, sure enough, to finish up after that pure,
blessed name so many of these miserables have got christened with;
and she was holding the child by the heels, head down, swinging it
back and for'ard, as you'd let a gold ring swing on a hair in a
tumbler, to try your fortune by, waiting till it would hit and ring.

"It was all but striking the brick walls each side, and she was
muttering and howling like a young she-devil over it, her eyes all
crazy and wild, and her hair hanging down her shoulders. Tipps flew
and grabbed the baby, and then she turned and clawed him like a
tiger-cat. But he's a strong man, and cool; he held the child back
with one hand, and with the other he got hold of one of her wrists
and gave it a grip,--just twist enough to make the other hand come
after his; and then he caught them both. She spit and kicked; it was
all she could do; she was just a mad thing. She lost her balance, of
course, and went down; he put his foot on her chest, just enough to
show her he could master her; and then she went from howling to
crying. 'Finish me, and I wouldn't care!' she said; and then lay
still, all in a heap, moaning. 'I won't hurt ye,' says Tipps. 'I
never hurt a woman yet, soul nor body. What was ye goin' to do with
this 'ere little baby?' 'I was goin' to send it out of the hell it's
born into,' she said, with an awful hate in the sound of her voice.
'Goin' to _kill_ it! You wouldn't ha' done that?' 'Yes, I would. I'd
'a done it, if I was hanged for it the next minute. Isn't it my
business that ever it was here?'

"'Now look here!' says Tipps. 'You're calmed down a little. If
you'll stay calm, and come with me, I'll take you to a safe place.
If you don't, I'll call a policeman, and you'll go to the lock-up.
Which'll ye have?' 'You've got me,' she said, in a kind of a sulk.
'I s'pose you'll do what you like with me. That's the way of it.
Anybody can be as bad and as miserable as they please, but they
won't be let out of it. It's hell, I tell you,--this very world. And
folks don't know they've got there.'

"Tipps says there's hopes of her from just that word bad. She
wouldn't have put that in, otherways. Well, he brought her here, and
the baby. And they're both up-stairs. She's as weak as water, now
the drink is out of her. But it wasn't all drink. The desperation is
in her eyes, though it's give way, and helpless. And what to do with
'em next, I _don't_ know."

"I do," said Desire, with her eyes full. "She must be comforted up.
And then, Mr. Vireo must know, the first thing. Afterwards, he will
see."

Luclarion took Desire up-stairs.

The girl was lying, in a clean night-dress, in a clean, white bed.
Her hair, dark and beautiful, was combed and braided away from her
face, and lay back, in two long, heavy plaits, across the pillow.
Her features were sharp, but delicate, and were meant to have been
pretty. But her eyes! Out of them a suffering demon seemed to look,
with a still, hopeless rage.

Desire came up to the bedside.

"What do you want?" the girl said, slowly, with a deep, hard,
resentful scorn in her voice. "Have you come to see what it is all
like? Do you want to feel how clean you are beside me? That's a part
of it; the way they torment."

It was like the cry of the devil out of the man against the Son of
God.

"No," said Desire, just as slowly, in her turn. "I can only feel the
cleanness in you that is making you suffer against the sin. The
badness doesn't belong to you. Let it go, and begin again."

It was the word of the Lord,--"Hold thy peace, and come out of him."
Desire Ledwith spoke as she was that minute moved of the Spirit. The
touch of power went down through all the misery and badness, to the
woman's soul, that knew itself to be just clean enough for agony.
She turned her eyes, with the fiery gloom in them, away, pressing
her forehead down against the pillow.

"God sees it better than I do," said Desire, gently.

An arm flung itself out from under the bedclothes, thrusting them
off. The head rolled itself over, with the face away.

"God! Pf!"

So far from Him; and yet so close, in the awful hold of his
unrelaxing love!

Desire kept silence; she could not force upon her the thought, the
Name: the Name for whose hallowing to pray, is to pray for the
holiness in ourselves that alone can make it tender.

"What do you know about God?" the voice asked defiantly, the face
still turned away.

"I know that his Living Spirit touches your thought and mine, this
moment, and moves them to each other. As you and I are alive, He is
alive beside us and between us. Your pain is his pain for you. You
feel it just where you are joined to Him; in the quick of your soul.
If it were not for that, you would be dead; you could not feel at
all."

Was this the Desire Ledwith of the old time, with deep thoughts but
half understood, and shrinking always from any recognizing word? She
shrunk now, just as much, from any needless expression of herself;
from any parade or talking over of sacred perception and experience;
but the real life was all the stronger in her; all the surer to use
her when its hour came. She had escaped out of all shams and
contradictions. Unconsent to the divine impulse comes of
incongruity. There was no incongruity now, to shame or to deter; no
separate or double consciousness to stand apart in her soul, rebuked
or repugnant. She gave herself quietly, simply, freely, to God's
thought for this other child of his; the Thought that she knew was
touching and stirring her own.

"I shall send somebody to you who can tell you more than I can,
Mary," she said, presently. "You will find there is heart and help
in the world that can only be God's own. Believe in that, and you
will come to believe in Him. You have seen only the wrong, bad side,
I am afraid. The _under_ side; the side turned down toward"--

"Hell-fire," said Mary Moxall, filling Desire's hesitation with an
utterance of hard, unrecking distinctness.

But Desire Ledwith knew that the hard unreckingness was only the
reflex of a tenderness quick, not dead, which the Lord would not let
go of to perish.

Sylvie and Hazel came in below, and she left Mary Moxall and went
down to them. The three took leave, for it was after five o'clock.

When they got out from the street-car at Borden Square, Desire left
them, to go round by Savin Street, and see Mr. Vireo. Hazel went
home; Mrs. Ripwinkley expected her to-night; Miss Craydocke and some
of the Beehive people were to come to tea. Sylvie hastened on to
Greenley Street, anxious to return to her mother. She had rarely
left her, lately, so long as this.

How would it be when they had heard from Mr. Thayne what she felt
sure they must hear,--when they had to leave Greenley Street and go
into that cheap little lodging-room, and she had to stay away from
her mother all day long?

She remembered the time when she had thought it would be nice to
have a "few things;" nice to earn her own living; to be one of the
"Other Girls."




CHAPTER XXXI.

CHOSEN: AND CALLED.


Desire Ledwith found nobody at home at Mr. Vireo's. The maid-servant
said that she could not tell when they would return. Mrs. Vireo was
at her mother's, and she believed they would not come back to tea.

Desire knew that it was one of the minister's chapel nights. She
went away, up Savin Street, disappointed; wishing that she could
have sent instant help to Mary Moxall, who, she thought, could not
withstand the evangel of Hilary Vireo's presence. It is so sure that
nothing so instantly brings the heavenly power to bear upon a soul
as contact with a humanity in which it already abides and rules. She
wanted this girl to touch the hem of a garment of earthly living,
with which it had clothed itself to do a work in the world. For the
Christ still finds and puts such garments on to walk the earth; the
seamless robes of undivided consecration to Himself.

As Desire crossed to Borden Street, and went on up the hill, there
came suddenly to her mind recollection of the Sunday noon, years
since, when she had walked over that same sidewalk with Kenneth
Kincaid; when he had urged her to take up Mission work, and she had
answered him with her girlish bluffness, that "she thought he did
not approve of brokering business; it was all there, why should they
not take it for themselves? Why should she set up to go between?"
She thought how she had learned, since, the beautiful links of
endless ministry; the prismatic law of mediation,--that there is no
tint or shade of spiritual being, no angle at which any soul catches
the Divine beam, that does not join and melt into the next above and
the next below; that the farther apart in the spectrum of humanity
the red of passion and the violet of peace, the more place and need
for every subdivided ray, to help translate the whole story of the
pure, whole whiteness.

She remembered what she had said another time about "seeing blue,
and living red." She was thinking out by the type the mystery of
difference,--the broken refractions that God lets his Spirit fall
into,--when, looking up as she was about to pass some person, she
met the face of Christopher Kirkbright.

He had not been at home of late; he had been busy up at Brickfield
Farms.

For nearly four months past, Cone Hill and the Clay Pits had been
his by purchase and legal transfer. He had lost no time in making
his offer to his brother-in-law. Ten words by the Atlantic cable had
done it, and the instructions had come back by the first mail
steamer. Repairing and building had been at once begun; an odd,
rambling wing, thrown out eastward, slanting off at a wholly
unarchitectural angle from the main house, and climbing the terraced
rock where it found best space and foothold, already made the quaint
structure look more like a great two-story Chinese puzzle than ever,
and covered in space for an ample, airy, sunny work-saloon above a
range of smaller rooms calculated for individual and home occupancy.

But the details of the plan at Brickfields would make a long story
within a story; we may have further glimpses of it, on beyond; we
must not leave our friends now standing in the street.

Mr. Kirkbright held out his hand to Desire, as he stopped to speak
with her.

"I am going down to Vireo's," he said. "I have come to a place in my
work where I want him."

"So have I," said Desire. "But he is not at home. I was going next
to Miss Euphrasia."

"And you and I are sent to stop each other. My sister is away, at
Milton, for two days."

Desire turned round. "Then I must go home again," she said.

Mr. Kirkbright moved on, down the hill beside her.

"Can I do anything for you?" he inquired.

"Yes," returned Desire, pausing, and looking gravely up at him. "If
you could go down to Luclarion Grapp's,--the Neighbors, you
know,--and carry some kind of a promise to a poor thing who has just
been brought there, and who thinks there is no promise in the world;
a woman who tried to kill her baby to get him out of it, and who
says that the world is hell, and people don't know they've got into
it. Go and tell her some of the things you told me, that morning up
at Brickfields."

"You have been to her? What have you told her yourself, already?"

"I told her that it was not all badness when one could feel the
misery of the badness. That her pain at it was God's pain for her.
That if He had done with her, she would be dead."

"Would she believe you? Did she seem to begin to believe?"

"I do not think she believes anything. She can't until the things to
believe in come to her. Mr. Vireo--or you--would make her see. I
told her I would send somebody who had more for her than I."

"You have told her the first message,--that the kingdom is at hand.
The Christ-errand must be done next. The full errand of _help_. That
was what was sent to the world, after the voice had cried in the
wilderness. It isn't Mr. Vireo or I,--but the helping hand; the
righting of condition; the giving of the new chance. We must not
leave all that to death and the angels. Miss Desire, this woman must
go to our mountain-refuge; to our sanatorium of souls. I have a good
deal to tell you about that."

They had walked on again, as they talked; they had come to the foot
of Borden Street. They must now turn two different ways.

They were standing a moment at the corner, as Mr. Kirkbright spoke.
When he said "our refuge,--our sanatorium,"--Desire blushed again as
she had blushed at Brickfields.

She was provoked at herself; why need personal pronouns come in at
all? Why, if they did, need they remind her of herself and him,
instead of merely the thoughts that they had had together, the
intent of which was high above them both? Why need she be pleased
and shy in her selfhood,--ashamed lest he should detect the thought
of pleasure in her at his sharing with her his grand purpose,
recognizing in her the echo of his inspiration? What made it so
different that Christopher Kirkbright should discover and
acknowledge such a sympathy between them, from her meeting it, as
she had long done, in Miss Euphrasia?

She would not let it be different; she would not be such a fool.

It was twilight, and her little lace veil was down. She took
courage behind it, and in her resolve,--for she knew that to be very
determined would make her pale, not red; and the next time she would
be on her guard, and very determined.

She gave him the hand he held out his own for, and bade him good
evening, with her head lifted just imperceptibly higher than was its
wont, and her face turned full toward him. Her eyes met his with an
honest calmness; she had summoned herself back.

He saw strength and earnestness; a flush of feeling; the face of a
woman made to look nobleness and enthusiasm into the soul of a man.

       *       *       *       *       *

She sat in the library that evening at nine o'clock.

She had drawn up her large chair to the open fire; her feet were
resting on the low fender; her eyes were watching shapes in the
coals.

Mrs. Lewes's "Middlemarch" lay on her lap; she had just begun to
read it. Her hands, crossed upon each other, had fallen upon the
page; she had found something of herself in those first chapters.
Something that reminded of her old longings and hindrances; of the
shallowness and half-living that had been about her, and the chafe
of her discontent in it.

She did not wonder that Dorothea was going to marry Mr. Casaubon.
Into some dream-trap just such as that she might have fallen, had a
Mr. Casaubon come in her way.

Instead, had come pain and mistake; a keen self-searching; a
learning to bear with all her might, to work, and to wait.

She had not been waiting for any making good in God Providence of
that special happiness which had passed her by. If she had, she
would not have been doing the sort of work she had taken into her
hands. When we wait for one particular hope, and will not be
satisfied with any other, the whole force of ourselves bends toward
it; we dictate to life, and wrest its tendencies at every turn.

The thing comes. Ask,--with the real might of whatever asking there
is in you,--and it shall be given you. But when you have got it, it
may not be the thing you thought it would be. Whosoever will have
his life shall lose it.

No; Desire Ledwith had rather turned away from all special hope,
thinking it was over for her. But she came to believe that all the
good in God's long years was not over; that she had not been
hindered from one thing, save to be kept for some other that He saw
better. She was willing to wait for his better,--his best. When she
paused to look at her life objectively, she rejoiced in it as the
one thread--a thread of changing colors--in God's manifold work,
that He was letting her follow alone with Him, and showing her the
secret beauty of. Up and down, in and out, backward and forward, she
wrought it after his pattern, and discerned continually where it
fell into combinations that she had never planned,--made surprises
for her of effects that were not her own. There is much ridicule of
mere tapestry and broidery work, as a business for women's fingers;
but I think the secret, uninterpreted charm of it, to the silliest
sorters of colors and counters of stitches, is beyond the fact, as
the beauty of children's plays is the parable they cannot help
having in them. Patient and careful doing, after a law and
rule,--and the gradual apparition of result, foreseen by the deviser
of the law and rule; it is life measured out upon a canvas. Who
knows how,--in this spiritual Kindergarten of a world,--the
rudiments of all small human devices were set in human faculty and
aptness for its own object-teaching toward a perfect heavenly
enlightenment?

Desire was thinking to-night, how impossible it is, as the pattern
of life grows, to help seeing a little of the shapes it may be
taking; to refrain from a looking forward that becomes eager with a
hint of possible unfolding.

Once, a while ago, she had thought that she discerned a green beauty
springing out from the dull, half-filled background; tender leaves
forming about a bare and awkward shoot; but suddenly there were no
more stitches in that direction that she could set; the leaves
stopped short in half-developed curves that never were completed.
The pattern set before her--given but one bit at a time, as life
patterns are, like part etchings of a picture in which you know not
how the spaces are to be filled up and related--changed; the place,
and the tint of the thread, changed also; she had to work on in a
new part, and in a different way. She could not discover then, that
these abortive leaves were the slender claspings of a calyx, in
whose midst might sometime fit the rose-bloom of a wonderful joy.
Was she discovering it now? For browns and grays,--generous and
strong, tender and restful,--was a flush of blossom hues that she
had not looked for, coming to be woven in? Was the empty calyx
showing the first shadowy petal-shapes of a most perfect flower?

It might be the flower of a gracious friendship only a joining of
hands in work for the kingdom-building; she did not let herself go
farther than this. But it was a friendship across which there lay
no bar and somehow, while she put from herself the thought that it
might ever be so promised to her as to be hers of all the world and
to the world's exclusion,--while she resented in herself that
foolish girl's blush, and resolved that it should never come
again,--she sat here to-night thinking how grand and perfect a thing
for a woman a grand man's friendship is; how it is different from
any, the most pure and sweet, of woman-tenderness; how the crossing
of her path with such a path as Christopher Kirkbright's, if it were
only once a day, or once a week, or once a month, would be a thing
to reckon joy and courage from; to live on from, as she lived on
from her prayers.

An hour had come in her life which gathered about her realities of
heaven, whether the earthly correspondence should concur, or no. A
noble influence which had met and moved her, seemed to come and
abide about her,--a thought-presence.

And a thought-presence was precisely what it was. A thousand
circumstances may stretch that hyphen which at once links
and separates the sign-syllables of the wonderful fact; an
impossibility, of physical conditions, may be between; but the fact
subsists--and in rare moments we know it--when that which belongs to
us comes invisibly and takes us to itself; when we feel the
footsteps afar off which may or may not be feet of the flesh turned
toward us. Yet even this conjunction does happen, now and again; the
will--the blessed purpose--is accomplished at once on earth and in
heaven.

When many minutes after the city bells had ceased to sound for nine
o'clock, the bell of her own door rang with a clear, strong stroke,
Desire Ledwith thought instantly of Mr. Kirkbright with a singular
recall,--that was less a change than a transfer of the same
perception,--from the inward to the actual. She had no reason to
suppose it,--no ordinary reason why,--but she was suddenly persuaded
that the friend who in the last hour had stood spiritually beside
her, stood now, in reality, upon her door-stone.

She did not even wonder for what he could have come. She did not
move from her chair; she did not lift her crossed hands from off her
open book. She did not break the external conditions in which unseen
forces had been acting. If she had moved,--pushed back her
chair,--put by her book,--it would have begun to seem strange, she
would have been back in a bond of circumstance which would have
embarrassed her; she would have been receiving an evening call at an
unusual hour. But to have the verity come in and fill the
dream,--this was not strange. And yet Christopher Kirkbright had
scarcely been in that house ten times before.

She heard him ask if Miss Ledwith were still below; if he might see
her. She heard Frendely close the outer door, and precede him toward
the door of the library. He entered, and she lifted her eyes.

"Don't move," he said quickly. "I have been seeing you sitting like
that, all the evening. It is a reverie come true. Only I have walked
out of my end of it, and into yours. May I stay a little while?"

Her face answered him in a very natural way. There was a wonder in
her eyes, and in the smile that crept over her lips; there were
wonder and waiting in the silence which she kept, answering in her
face only, at the first, that peculiar greeting. Perhaps any woman,
who had had no dream, would have found other response as difficult.

"I am going back to Brickfields to-morrow. I am more eager than
ever to get the home finished there, for those who are waiting for
its shelter. I have had a busy day,--a busy evening; it has not been
a _still_ reverie in which I have seen you. In this last half hour,
I have been with Vireo. He has found a woman for me who can be a
directress of work; can manage the sewing-room. A good woman, too,
who will _mother_--not 'matron'--the girls. I have bought five
machines. They will make their own garments first; then they will
work for pay, some hours each day, or a day or two every week,--in
turn. That money will be their own. The rest of the time will be due
to the commonwealth. There will be a farm-kitchen, where they will
cook--and learn to cook well--for the farm hands; they will wash and
iron; they will take care of fruit and poultry. As they learn the
various employments, they will take their place as teachers to
new-comers; we shall keep them busy, and shall make a life around
them, that will be worth their laboring for; as God makes all the
beauty of the world for us to live in, in compensation for the
little that He leaves it needful for us to do. There is where I
think our privilege comes in, after the similitude of his; to
supplement broadly that which shall not hinder honest and
conditional exertion. I have been longing to tell you about it; I
have had a vision of you in the midst of my work and talk; I have
had a feeling of you this evening, waiting just so and there; I had
to come. I went to see your Mary Moxall, Miss Desire."

"In the midst of all you had to do!"

"Was it not a part? 'All in the day's work' is a good proverb."

"What did you say to her?"

"I asked her if she would come up into the country with my sister,
to a home among great, still, beautiful hills, and take care of her
baby, and some flowers."

"It was like asking her to come home--to God!"

"Yes,--I think it was asking her God's way. How can we, standing
among all the helps and harmonies of our lives, ask them to come
straight up to Him,--His invisible unapproachable Self,--out of the
terrible darkness and chaos of theirs? There are no steps."

"Tell me more about the steps you have been making--in the hills.
You said 'flowers.'"

"Yes; there will be a conservatory. I must have them all the year
through; the short summer gardening would not be ministry enough.
Beyond the Chapel Rock runs back a large new wing, with sewing and
living rooms; they only wait good weather for finishing. A dozen
women can live and work there. As they grow fit and willing, and
numerous enough to colonize off, there are little houses to be built
that they can move into, set up homes, earn their machines, and at
last, in cases where it proves safe and wise, their homes
themselves. I shall provide a depot for their needlework in the
city; and as the village grows it will create a little demand of its
own. Mr. Thayne is going to build the cottages, and he and I have
contracted for the seven miles of railroad to Tillington, as a
private enterprise. The brickmaking is to begin at once; we shall do
something for the building of the new, fire-proof Boston. Your
thought is growing into a fact, Miss Desire; and I think I have not
forgotten any particular of it. Now, I have come back to you for
more,--a great deal more, if I can get it. First, a name. We can't
_call_ it a City of Refuge, beautiful as such a city is--to _be_.
Neither will I call it a Home, or an Asylum. The first thing Mary
Moxall said to me was,--'I won't go to no Refuges nor Sile'ums. I
don't want to be raked up, mud an' all, into a heap that everybody
knows the name of. If the world was big enough for me to begin
again,--in a clean place; but there ain't no clean places!' And then
I asked her to come home with me and my sister."

"You mean, of course, a neighborhood name, for the settlement, as it
grows?"

"Exactly. 'Brickfield Farms' belongs to the outlying husbandry and
homesteads. And 'Clay Pits!' It is _out_ of the pit and the miry
clay that we want to bring them. The suggestion of that is too much
like Mary Moxall's 'heap that everybody knows the name of.'"

"Why not call it 'Hill-hope'? 'The hills, whence cometh our
strength;' 'the mountain of the height of Israel where the Lord will
plant it, and the dry tree shall flourish'?"

"Thank you," said Mr. Kirkbright, heartily. "That is the right word.
It is named."

Desire said nothing. She looked quietly into the fire with a flush
of deep pleasure on her face. Mr. Kirkbright remained silent also
for a few minutes.

He looked at her as she sat there, in this room that was her own;
that was filled with home-feeling and association for her; where a
solemnly tender commission and opportunity had been given her, and
had centred, and he almost doubted whether the thing that was urging
itself with him to be asked for last and greatest of all, were right
to ask; whether it existed for him, and a way could be made for it
to be given him. Yet the question was in him, strong and earnest; a
question that had never been in him before to ask of any woman. Why
had it been put there if it might not at least be spoken? If there
were not possibly, in this woman's keeping, the ordained and perfect
answer?

While he sat and scrupled about it, it sprang, with an impulse that
he did not stop to scruple at, to his lips.

"I shall want to ask you questions every day, dear friend! What are
we to do about it?"

Desire's eyes flashed up at him with a happiness in them that waited
not to weigh anything; that he could not mistake. The color was
bright upon her cheek; her lips were soft and tremulous. Then the
eyes dropped gently away again; she answered nothing,--with words.

So far as he had spoken, she had answered.

"I want you there, by my side, to help me make a real human home
around which other homes may grow. There ought to be a heart in it,
and I cannot do it alone. Could you--_will_ you--come? Will you be
to me the one woman of the world, and out of your purity and
strength help me to help your sisters?"

He had risen and walked the few steps across the distance that was
between them. He stopped before her, and bending toward her, held
out his hands.

Desire stood up and laid hers in them.

"It must be right. You have come for me. I cannot possibly do
otherwise than this."

The deep, gracious, divine fact had asserted itself. A house here,
or a house there could not change or bind it. They belonged
together. There was a new love in the world, and the world would
have to arrange itself around it. Around it and the Will that it was
to be wedded to do.

They stood together, hands in hands. Christopher Kirkbright leaned
over and laid his lips against her forehead.

He whispered her name, set in other syllables that were only for
him to say to her. I shall not say them over on this page to you.

But there is a line in the blessed Scripture that we all know, and
God had fulfilled it to his heart.

Strangely--more strangely than any story can contrive--are the
happenings of life put side by side.

As they sat there a little longer in the quiet library, forgetting
the late evening hour, because it was morning all at once to them;
forgetting Sylvie Argenter and her mother as they were at just this
moment in the next room; only remembering them among those whom this
new relation and joining of purpose must make surer and safer, not
less carefully provided for in the changes that would occur,--the
door of the gray parlor opened; a quick step fell along the passage,
and Sylvie unlatched the library door, and stood in the entrance
wide-eyed and pale.

"Desire! Come!"

"Sylvie! _What_, dear?" cried Desire, quickly, as she sprang to meet
her, her voice chording responsive to Sylvie's own, catching in it
the indescribable tone that tells so much more than words. She did
not need the further revelation of her face to know that something
deep and strange had happened.

Sylvie said not a syllable more, but turned and hurried back along
the hall.

Desire and Mr. Kirkbright followed her.

Mrs. Argenter was sitting in the deep corner of her broad, low sofa,
against the two large pillows.

"A minute ago," said Sylvie, in the same changed voice, that spoke
out of a different world from the world of five minutes before, "she
was _here_! She gave me her plate to put away on the sideboard, and
_now_,--when I turned round,"--

She was _There_.

The plate, with its bits of orange-rind, and an untasted section of
the fruit, stood upon the sideboard. The book she had been reading
fifteen minutes since lay, with her eye-glasses inside it, at the
page where she had stopped, upon the couch; her left hand had
fallen, palm upward, upon the cushioned seat; her life had gone
instantly and without a sign, out from her mortal body.

Mrs. Argenter had died of that disease which lets the spirit free
like the uncaging of a bird.

Hypertrophy of the heart. The gradual thickening and hardening of
those mysterious little gates of life and the walls in which they
are set; the slower moving of them on their palpitating hinges, till
a moment comes when they open or close for the last time, and in
that pause ajar the soul flits out, like some curious, unwary thing,
over a threshold it may pass no more again, forever.




CHAPTER XXXII.

EASTER LILIES.


Bright, soft days began to come; days in which windows stood open,
and pots of plants were set out on the window-sills; days
alternating as in the long, New England spring they always do, with
bleak intervals of sharp winds and cold sea-storms; yet giving sweet
anticipation tenderly, as a mother gives beforehand that which she
cannot find in her heart to keep back till the birthday. That is the
charm of Nature with us; the motherliness in her that offsets, and
breaks through with loving impulse, her rule of rigidness. The year
comes slowly to its growth, but she relaxes toward it with a kind of
pity, and says, "There, take this! It isn't time for it, but you
needn't wait for everything till you're grown up!"

People feel happy, in advance of all their hopes and realizations,
on such days; the ripeness of the year, in whatever good it may be
making for them, touches them like the soft air that blows up from
the south. There is a new look on men's and women's faces as you
meet them in the street; a New Jerusalem sort of look; the heavens
are opened upon them, and the divineness of sunshine flows in
through sense and spirit.

Sylvie Argenter was very peaceful. She told Desire that she never
would be afraid again in all her life; she _knew_ how things were
measured, now. She was "so glad the money had almost all been spent
while mother lived; that not a dollar that could buy her a comfort
had been kept back."

She was quite content to stay now; at least till Rachel Froke
should come; she was busily helping Desire with her wedding outfit.
She was willing to receive from her the fair wages of a seamstress,
now that she could freely give her time, and there was no one to
accept and use an invalid's expensive luxuries.

Desire would not have thought it needful that hundreds of extra
yards of cambric and linen should be made up for her, simply because
she was going to be married, if it had not been that her marriage
was to be so especially a beginning of new life and work, in which
she did not wish to be crippled by any present care for self.

"I see the sense of it now, so far as concerns quantity; as for
quality, I will have nothing different from what I have always had."

There was no trousseau to exhibit; there were only trunks-full of
good plenishing that would last for years.

Sylvie cut out, and parceled. Elise Mokey, and one or two other
girls who had had only precarious employment and Committee "relief"
since the fire, had the stitching given them to do; and every tuck
and hem was justly paid for. When the work came back from their
hands, Sylvie finished and marked delicately.

She had the sunny little room, now, over the gray parlor, adjoining
Desire's own. The white box lay upon a round, damask-covered-stand
in the corner, under her mother's picture painted in the graceful
days of the gray silks and llama laces; and around this, drooping
and trailing till they touched the little table and veiled the box
that held the beautiful secret,--seeming to say, "We know it too,
for we are a part,"--wreathed the shining sprays of blossomy fern.

In these sunny days of early spring, Sylvie could not help being
happy. The snows were gone now, except in deep, dark places, out of
the woods; the ferns and vines and grasses were alive and eager for
a new summer's grace and fullness; their far-off presence made the
air different, already, from the airs of winter.

Yet Rodney Sherrett had kept silence.

All these weeks had gone by, and Miss Euphrasia had had no answer
from over the water. Of all the letters that went safely into mail
bags, and of all the mail bags that went as they were bound, and of
all the white messages that were scattered like doves when those
bags were opened,--somehow--it can never be told how,--that
particular little white, folded sheet got mishandled, mislaid, or
missent, and failed of its errand; and at the time when Miss
Euphrasia began to be convinced that it must be so, there came a
letter from Mr. Sherrett to herself, written from London, where he
had just arrived after a visit to Berlin.

"I have had no family news," he wrote, "of later date than January
20th. Trust all is well. Shall sail from Liverpool on the 9th."

The date of that was March 20th.

The fourteenth of April, Easter Monday, was fixed for Desire
Ledwith's marriage.

Rachel Froke came back on the Friday previous. Desire would have her
in time, but not for any fatigues.

The gray parlor was all ready; everything just as it had been before
she left it. The ivies had been carefully tended, and the golden and
brown canary was singing in his cage. There was nothing to remind of
the different life to which, the place had been lent, making its
last hours restful and pleasant, or of the death that had stepped so
noiselessly and solemnly in.

Desire had formally made over this house to her cousin and
co-heiress, Hazel Ripwinkley.

"It must never be left waiting, a mere possible convenience, for
anybody," she said. "There must be a real life in it, as long as we
can order it so."

The Ripwinkleys were to leave Aspen Street, and come here with
Hazel. Miss Craydocke, who never had half room enough in Orchard
Street, was to "spill over" from the Bee-hive into the Mile-hill
house. "She knew just whom to put there; people who would take care
and comfort. Them shouldn't be any hurt, and there would be lots of
help."

There was a widow with three daughters, to begin with; "just as neat
as a row of pins;" but who had had less and less to be neat with for
seven years past; one of the daughters had just got a situation as
compositor, and another as a book-keeper; between them, they could
earn twelve hundred dollars a year. The youngest had to stay at home
and help her mother do the work, that they might all keep together.
They could pay three hundred dollars for four rooms; but of course
they could not get decent ones, in a decent neighborhood, for that.
That was what Bee-hives were for; houses that other people could do
without.

Hazel had her wish; it came to pass that they also should make a
bee-hive.

"And whenever I marry," Hazel said, "I hope he won't be building a
town of his own to take me to; for I shall _have_ to bring him here.
I'm the last of the line."

"That will all be taken care of as the rest has been. There isn't
half as much left for us to manage as we think," said Desire,
putting back into the desk the copy of Uncle Titus's will which they
had been reading over together. "He knew the executorship into
which he gave it."

Shall I stop here with them until the Easter tide, and finish
telling you how it all was?

There is a little bit about Bel Bree and Kate Sencerbox and the
Schermans, which belongs somewhat earlier than that,--in those few
pleasant days when March was beguiling us to believe in the more
engaging of his double moods, and in the possibility of his behaving
sweetly at the end, and going out after all like a lamb.

We can turn back afterwards for that. I think you would like to hear
about the wedding.

Does it never occur to you that this "going back and living up" in a
story-book is a sign of a possibility that may be laid by in the
divine story-telling, for the things we have to hurry away from, and
miss of, now? It does to me. I know that _That_ can manage at least
as well as mine can.

       *       *       *       *       *

Christopher Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith were married in the
library, where they had betrothed themselves; where Desire had felt
all the sacredness of her life laid upon her; where she took up now
another trust, that was only an outgrowth and expansion of the
first, and for which she laid down nothing of its spirit and intent.

Mrs. Ledwith and the sisters--Mrs. Megilp and Glossy--were there, of
course.

Mrs. Megilp had said over to herself little imaginary speeches about
the homestead and old associations, and "Daisy's great love and
reverence for all that touched the memory of her uncle, to whom she
certainly owed everything;" about the journey to New York, and the
few days they had to give there to Mr. Oldway's life-long friend
and Desire's adviser, Mr. Marmaduke Wharne ("_Sir_ Marmaduke he
would be, everybody knew, if he had chosen to claim the English
title that belonged to him"),--who was too infirm to come on to the
wedding; and the necessity there was for them to go as fast as
possible to their estate in the country,--Hill-hope,--where Mr.
Kirkbright was building "mills and a village and a perfect castle of
a house, and a private railroad and heaven knows what,"--all this to
account, indirectly, for the quiet little ordinary ceremony, which
of course would otherwise have been at the Church of the Holy
Commandments; or at least up-stairs in the long, stately old
drawing-room which was hardly ever used.

But none of the people were there to whom any such little speeches
had to be made; nobody who needed any accounting to for its oddity
was present at Desire Ledwith's wedding.

Mr. Vireo officiated; there was something in his method and manner
which Mrs. Megilp decidedly objected to.

It was "everyday," she thought. "It didn't give you a feeling of
sanctity. It was just as if he was used to the Almighty, and didn't
mind! It seemed as if he were just mentioning things, in a quiet
way, to somebody who was right at his elbow. For her part, she liked
a little lifting up."

Hazel Ripwinkley heard her, and told Sylvie and Diana that "that
came of having all your ideas of home in the seventh story; of
course you wanted an elevator to go up in."

Desire Ledwith looked what she was, to-day; a grand, pure woman; a
fit woman to stand up beside a man like Christopher Kirkbright, in
fair white garments, and say the words that made her his wife.
There was a beautiful, sweet majesty in her giving of herself.

She did not disdain rich robes to-day,--she would give herself at
her very best, with all generous and gracious outward sign.

She wore a dress of heavy silk, long-trained; the cream-white folds,
unspoiled by any frippery of lace, took, as they dropped around her,
the shade and convolutions of a lily. Upon her bosom, and fastening
her veil, were deep green leaves that gave the contrast against
which a lily rests itself. Around her throat were links of frosted
silver, from which hung a pure plain silver cross; these were the
gift of Hazel. The veil, of point, and rarely beautiful, fell back
from her head,--lovely in its shape, and the simple wreathing of the
dark, soft hair,--like a drift of water spray; not covering or
misting her all over,--only lending a touch of delicate suggestion
to the pure, cool, graceful, flower-like unity of her whole air and
apparel.

"Desire is beautiful!" said Hazel Ripwinkley to her mother. "She
never _stopped_ to be _pretty_!"

White calla-lilies, with their tall stems and great shadowy leaves,
were in the Pompeiian vases on the mantel; in the India jars in the
corners below; in a large Oriental china bowl that was set upon the
closed desk on the library table, wheeled back for the first time
that anybody there had seen it so, against the wall.

Hazel had hung a lily-wreath upon the carved back of Uncle Titus's
chair, that no one might sit down in it, and placed it in the recess
at Desire's left hand, as she should stand up to be married.

"Will you two take each other, to love and dwell together, and to do
God's work, as He shall show and help you, so long as He keeps you
both in this his world? Will you, Desire Ledwith, take Christopher
Kirkbright to be your wedded husband; will you, Christopher
Kirkbright, take Desire Ledwith to be your wedded wife; and do you
thereto mutually make your vows in the sight of God and before this
company?"

And they answered together, "We do."

It was a promise for more than each other; it was a
life-consecration. It was a gathering up and renewal of all that had
been holy in the resolves of either while they had lived apart; a
joining of two souls in the Lord.

Hilary Vireo would not have dared to lead to perjury, by such words,
a common man and woman. It was enough for such to ask if they would
take, and keep to, each other.

Mrs. Megilp thought it was "so jumbled!" "If it was _her_ daughter,
she should not think she was half married."

Mrs. Megilp put it more shrewdly than she had intended.

Desire and Christopher Kirkbright were very sure they had _not_ been
"half married." It was not the world's half marriage that they had
stood up there together for.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

KITCHEN CRAMBO.


Elise Mokey and Mary Pinfall came in one evening to see Bel Bree and
Kate.

There had been company to tea up-stairs, and the dishes were more
than usual, and the hour was a little later.

Kate was putting up the last of the cooking utensils, and scalding
down the big tin dish-pan and the sink. Bel was up-stairs.

A table with a fresh brown linen cloth upon it, two white plates and
cups, and two white _napkins_, stood out on the kitchen floor under
the gas-light. The dumb-waiter came rumbling down, with toast dish,
tea and coffee pots, oyster dish and muffin plate. Several slices of
cream toast were left, and there was a generous remnant of nicely
browned scalloped oysters. The half muffins, buttered hot, looked
tender and tempting still.

Kate removed the dishes, sent up the waiter, and producing some nice
little stone-ware nappies hot from the hot closet, transferred the
food from the china to these, laying it neatly together, and
replaced them in the closet, to wait till Bel should come. The tea
and coffee she poured into small white pitchers, also hot in
readiness, and set them on the range corner. Then she washed the
porcelain and silver in fresh-drawn scalding water, wiped and set
them safely on the long, white sideboard. There they gleamed in the
gas-light, and lent their beauty to the brightness of the room, just
as much as they would have done in actual using.

"But what a lot of trouble!" said Elise Mokey.

"Half a dozen dishes?" returned Kate. "Just three minutes' work; and
a warm, fresh supper to make it worth while. Besides rubbing the
silver once in four weeks, instead of every Friday. A Yankee kitchen
is a labor-saving institution, Mrs. Scherman says."

Down came the waiter again, and down the stairs came Bel. Kate
brought two more cups and plates and napkins.

"Now, girls, come and take some tea," she said, drawing up the
chairs.

Mrs. Scherman was not strict about "kitchen company." She gave the
girls freely to understand that a friend or two happening in now and
then to see them, were as welcome to their down-stairs table as her
own happeners in were to hers. "I know it is just the cosiness and
the worth-while of home and living," she said. "And I'll trust the
'now and then' of it to you."

The hint of reasonable limit, and the word of trust, were better
than lock and law.

"How nice this is!" said Mary Pinfall, as Bel put a hot muffin,
mellow with sweet butter, upon her plate.

"If Matilda Meane only knew which side--and where--bread _was_
buttered! She's living on 'relief,' yet; and she buys cream-cakes
for dinner, and peanuts for tea! But, Bel, what were you up-stairs
for? I thought you was queen o' the kitchen!"

"Kate gives me her chance, sometimes. We change about, to make
things even. The best of it is in the up-stairs work, and waiting at
table is the first-best chance of all. You see, you 'take it in at
the pores,' as the man says in the play."

"Tea and oysters?" said Elise, with an exclamatory interrogation.

"You know better. See here, Elise. You don't half believe in this
experiment, though you appreciate the muffins. But it isn't just
loaves and fishes. There's a _living_ in the world, and a way to
earn it, besides clothes, and bread and butter. If you want it, you
can choose your work nearest to where the living is. And wherever
else it may or mayn't be, it _is_ in houses, and round tea-tables
like this."

"Other people's living,--for you to look at and wait on," said
Elise. "I like to be independent."

"They can't keep it back from us, if they wanted to," said Bel. "And
you _can't_ be independent; there's no such thing in the world. It's
all give and take."

"How about 'other folks' dust,' Kate? Do you remember?"

"There's only one place, I guess, after all," said Kate, "where you
can be shut up with nothing but your own dust!"

"Sharper than ever, Kate Sencerbox! I guess you _do_ get rubbed up!"

"Mr. Stalworth is there to-night," said Bel. "He tells as good
stories as he writes. And they've been talking about Tyndall's
Essays, and the spectroscope. Mrs. Scherman asked questions that I
don't believe she'd any particular need of answers to, herself; and
she stopped me once when I was going out of the room for something.
I knew by her look that she wanted me to hear."

"If they want you to hear, why don't they ask you to sit down and
hear comfortably?" said Elise Mokey, who had got her social
science--with a _little_ warp in it--from Boffin's Bower.

"Because it's my place to stand, at that time," said Bel, stoutly;
"and I shouldn't be comfortable out of my place. I haven't earned a
place like Mrs. Scherman's yet, or married a man that has earned it
for me. There are proper things for everybody. It isn't always
proper for Mrs. Scherman to sit down herself; or for Mr. Scherman to
keep his hat on. It's the knowing what's proper that sets people
really up; it _never_ puts them down!"

"There's one thing," said Kate Sencerbox. "You might be parlor
people all your days, and not get into everybody's parlor, either.
There's an up-side and a down-side, all the way through, from top to
bottom. The very best chance, for some people, if they only knew it,
into some houses, would be up through the kitchen."

"Never mind," said Bel, putting sugar into Mary Pinfall's second cup
of coffee. "I've got the notion of those lines, Kate,--I was going
to tell you,--into my head at last, I do believe. Red-hot iron makes
a rainbow through a prism, like any light; but iron-_steam_ stops a
stripe of the color; and every burning thing does the same
way,--stops its own color when it shines through its own vapor;
there! Let's hold on to that, and we'll go all over it another time.
There's a piece about it in last month's Scribner."

"What _are_ you talking about?" said Elise Mokey.

"The way they've been finding out what the sun is made of. By the
black lines across the rainbow colors. It's a telegraph; they've
just learned to read it."

"But what do _you_ care?"

"I guess it's put there as much, for me as anybody," said Bel. "I
don't think we should ever pick up such things, though, among the
basting threads at Fillmer & Bylles'. They're lying round here,
loose; in books and talk, and everything. They're going to have
Crambo this evening, Kate. After these dishes are washed, I mean to
try my hand at it. They were laughing about one Mrs. Scherman made
last time; they couldn't quite remember it. I've got it. I picked it
up among the sweepings. I shall take it in to her by and by."

Bel went to her work-basket as she spoke, and lifting up some calico
pieces that lay upon it, drew from underneath two or three folded
bits of paper.

"This is it," she said, selecting one, and coming back and reading.

(Do you see, let me ask in a hurried parenthesis,--how the tone of
this household might easily have been a different one, and pervaded
differently its auxiliary department? How, in that case, it might
have been nothing better than a surreptitious scrap of silk or
velvet, that would have lain in Bel Bree's work-basket, with a story
about it of how, and for what gayety, it had been made; a scrap out
of a life that these girls could only gossip and wonder about,--not
participate, and with self-same human privilege and faculty delight
in; and yet the only scrap that--"out of the sweepings"--they could
have picked up? _There_ is where, if you know it, dear parlor
people, the up-side, by just living, can so graciously and
generously be always helping the down.)

Bel read:--

"'What of that second great fire that was prophesied to come before
Christmas?'--'Peaches.'"

"You've got to get that word into the answer, you see and it hasn't
the very least thing to do with it! Now see:--

          'A prophet, after the event,
             No startling wisdom teaches;
           A second fire would scarce be sent
           To gratify the morbid bent
             That for fresh horror reaches.
           But, friend, do tell me why you went
             And mixed it up with _peaches_!'

It's great fun! And sometimes it's lovely, real poetry. Kate,
you've got to give me some words and questions, I'm going to take to
Crambo."

"You'll have to mix it up with dish-washing," said Elise.
"Dish-washing and dust,--you can't get rid of them!"

"We do, though!" said Kate, alertly, jumping up and beginning to
fetch the plates and cups from the dumb-waiter. "Here, Bel!" And she
tossed three or four long, soft, clean towels over to her from the
shelf beside the china.

"And about that dusting," she went on, after the noise of the hot
water rushing from the faucet was over, and she began dropping the
things carefully down through the cloud of steam into the great pan
full of suds, and fishing them up again with a fork and a little
mop,--"about the dusting, I didn't finish. It's a work of art to
dust Mrs. Scherman's parlor. Don't you think there's a pleasure in
handling and touching up and setting out all those pretty things?
Don't they get to be a part of our having, too? Don't I take as much
comfort in her fernery as she does? I know every little green and
woolly loop that comes up in it. It's the only sense there is in
things. There's a picture there, of cows coming home, down a green
lane, and the sun striking through, and lighting up the gravel, and
a patch of green grass, and the red hair on the cows' necks. You
think you just catch it _coming_, suddenly, through the trees, when
you first look up at it. And you go right into a little piece of the
country, and stand there. Mr. Scherman doesn't own that lane, or
those cows, though he bought the picture. All he owns is what he
gets by the signs; and I get that, every day, for the dusting! There
are things to be earned and shared where people _live_, that you
can't earn in the sewing-shops."

"That's what Bel said. Well, I'm glad you like it. Sha'n't I wipe up
some of those cups?"

"They're all done now," said Bel, piling them together.

In fifteen minutes after their own tea was ended, the kitchen was in
order again; the dumb-waiter, with its freight, sent up to the china
closet; the brown linen cloth and the napkins folded away in the
drawer, and the white-topped table ready for evening use. Bel Bree
had not been brought up in a New England farm-house, and seen her
capable stepmother "whew round," to be hard put to it, now, over
half a dozen cups and tumblers more or less.

"We must go," said Elise Mokey. "I've got the buttons to sew on to
those last night-gowns of Miss Ledwith's. I want to carry them back
to-morrow."

"You're lucky to sew for her," said Bel. "But you see we all have to
do for somebody, and I'd as lief it would be teacups, for my part,
as buttons."

Bel Bree's old tricks of rhyming were running in her head. This game
of Crambo--a favorite one with the Schermans and their bright little
intimate circle--stirred up her wits with a challenge. And under
the wits,--under the quick mechanic action of the serving
brain,--thoughts had been daily crowding and growing, for which
these mere mental facilities were waiting, the ready instruments.

I have said that Bel Bree was a born reformer and a born poet; and
that the two things go together. To see freshly and clearly,--to
discern new meaning in old living,--living as old as the world is;
to find by instinct new and better ways of doing, the finding of
which is often only returning to the heart and simplicity of the
old living before it _was_ old with social circumventions and needed
to be fresh interpreted; these are the very heavenly gift and office
of illumination and leadership. Just as she had been made, and just
where she had been put,--a girl with the questions of woman-life
before her in these days of restless asking and uncertain
reply,--with her lot cast here, in this very crowding, fermenting,
aspiring, great New England metropolis, in the hour of its most
changeful and involved experience,--she brought the divine talisman
of her nature to bear upon the nearest, most practical point of the
wide tangle with which it came in contact. And around her in this
right place that she had found and taken, gathered and wrought
already, by effluence and influence, forces and results that gather
and work about any nucleus of life, however deep hidden it may be in
a surrounding deadness. All things,--creation itself,--as Asenath
had said, must begin in spots; and she and Bel Bree had begun a fair
new spot, in which was a vitality that tends to organic
completeness, to full establishment, and triumphant growth.

Upon Bel herself reflected quickly and surely the beneficent action
of this life. She was taking in truly, at every pore. How long would
it have been before, out of the hard coarse limits in which her one
line of labor and association had first placed her, she would have
come up into such an atmosphere as was here, ready made for her to
breathe and abide in? To help make also; to stand at its practical
mainspring, and keep it possible that it should move on.

The talk, the ideas of the day, were in her ears; the books, the
periodicals of the day were at hand, and free for her to avail
herself of. The very fun at Mrs, Scherman's tea-table was the sort
of fun that can only sparkle out of culture. There was a grace that
her aptness caught, and that was making a lady of her.

"I'll give in," said Elise Mokey, "that you're getting _style_;
though I can't tell how it is either. It ain't in your calico
dresses, nor the doing up of your hair."

Perhaps it was a good deal in the very simplifying of these from the
exaggerated imitations of the shop and street, as well as in the
tone of all the rest with which these inevitably fell into harmony.

But I want to tell you about Bel's kitchen Crambo. I want to show
you how what is in a woman, in heart and mind, springs up and shows
itself, and may grow to whatever is meant for it, out of the
quietest background of homely use.

She brought out pencil and paper, and made Kate write question slips
and detached words.

"I feel just tingling to try," she said. "There's a kind of dancing
in my head, of things that have been there ever so long. I believe I
shall make a poem to-night. It's catching, when you're predisposed;
and it's partly the spring weather, and the sap coming up. 'Put a
name to it,' Katie! Almost anything will set me off."

Kate wrote, on half a dozen scraps; then tossed them up, and pushed
them over for Bel to draw.

"How do you like the city in the spring?" was the question; and the
word, suggested by Kate's work at the moment, was,--"Hem."

Bel put her elbows on the table, and her hands up against her ears.
Her eyes shone, as they rested intent upon the two penciled bits.
The link between them suggested itself quickly and faintly; she was
grasping at an elusive something with all the fine little quivering
brain-tentacles that lay hold of spiritual apprehension.

Just at that moment the parlor bell rang.

"I'll go," she said. "You keep to your sewing. It's for the nursery,
I guess, and I'll do my poem up there."

She caught up pencil and paper, and the other fragment also,--Mrs.
Scherman's own rhyme about the "peaches."

Mrs. Scherman met her at the parlor door.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you," she said; "but the baby is stirring.
Could you, or Kate, go up and try to hush her off again? If I go,
she'll keep me."

"I will," said Bel. "Here is that 'Crambo' you were talking of at
tea, Mrs. Scherman. I kept it. Kate picked it up with the scraps."

"O, thank you! Why, Bel, how your face shines!"

Bel hurried off, for Baby Karen "stirred" more emphatically at this
moment. Asenath went back into the parlor.

"Here is that rhyme of mine, Frank, that you were asking for. Bel
found it in the dust-pan. I believe she's writing rhymes herself.
She tries out every idea she picks up among us. She had a pencil in
her hand, and her face was brimful of something. Mr. Stalworth, if
_I_ find anything in the dust-pan, I shall turn it over to you.
'First and Last' is bound to act up to its title, and transpose
itself freely, according to Scripture."

"'First and Last' will receive, under either head, whatever you will
indorse, Mrs. Scherman,--and the last not least,"--returned the
benign and brilliant editor.

Bel had a knack with a baby. She knew enough to understand that
small human beings have a good many feelings and experiences
precisely like those of large ones. She knew that if _she_ woke up
in the night, she should not be likely to fall asleep again if
pulled up out of her bed into the cold; nor if she were very much
patted and talked to. So she just took gently hold of the upper
edge of the small, fine blanket in which Baby Karen was wrapped, and
by it drew her quietly over upon her other side. The little limbs
fell into a new place and sensation of rest, as larger limbs do;
little Karen put off waking up and crying for one delicious instant,
as anybody would; and in that instant sleep laid hold of her again.
She was safe, now, for another hour or two, at least.

Mrs. Scherman said she had really never had so little trouble with a
baby as with this one, who had nobody especially appointed to make
out her own necessity by constant "tending."

Bel did not go down-stairs again. She could do better here than with
Kate sitting opposite, aware of all her scratches and poetical
predicaments.

An hour went by. Bel was hardly equal yet to five-minute Crambo; and
besides, she was doing her best; trying to put something clearly
into syllables that said itself, unsyllabled, to her.

She did not hear Mrs. Scherman when she came up the stairs. She had
just read over to herself the five completed stanzas of her poem.

It had really come. It was as if a violet had been born to actual
bloom from the thought, the intangible vision of one. She wondered
at the phrasing, marveling how those particular words had come and
ranged themselves at her call. She did not know how she had done it,
or whether she herself had done it at all. She began almost to think
she must have read it before somewhere. Had she just picked it up
out of her memory? Was it a borrowing, a mimicry, a patchwork?

But it was very pretty, very sweet! It told her own feelings over to
her, with more that she had not known she had felt or perceived.
She read it again from beginning to end in a whisper. Her mouth was
bright with a smile and her eyes with tears when she had ended.

Asenath Scherman with her light step came in and stood beside her.

"Won't you tell _me_?" the sweet, gracious voice demanded.

Bel Bree looked up.

"I thought I'd try, in fun," she said, "and it came in real
earnest."

Asenath forgot that the face turned up to hers, with the smile and
the tears and the color in it, was the face of her hired servant. A
lovely soul, all alight with thought and gladness, met her through
it.

She bent down and touched Bel's forehead with her lady-lips.

Bel put the little scribbled paper in her hand, and ran away,
up-stairs.

"Will you give it to me, Bel, and let me do what I please with
it?"--Mrs. Scherman went to Bel and asked next day.

Bel blushed. She had been a little frightened in the morning to
think of what had happened over night. She could not quite recollect
all the words of her verses, and she wondered if they were really as
pretty as she had fancied in the moment of making them.

All she could answer was that Mrs. Scherman was "very kind."

"Then you'll trust me?"

And Bel, wondering very much, but too shy to question, said she
would.

A few days after that, Asenath called her up-stairs. The postman had
rung five minutes before, and Kate had carried up a note.

"We were just in time with our little spring song," she said.
"_Blue_birds have to sing early; at least a month beforehand. See
here! Is this all right?" and she put into Bel's hand a little
roughish slip of paper, upon which was printed:--

                 "THE CITY IN SPRING.

          "It is not much that makes me glad:
           I hold more than I ever had.
           The empty hand may farther reach,
           And small, sweet signs all beauty teach.

          "I like the city in the spring,
           It has a hint of everything.
           Down in the yard I like to see
           The budding of that single tree.

          "The little sparrows on the shed;
           The scrap of soft sky overhead;
           The cat upon the sunny wall;
           There's so much _meant_ among them all.

          "The dandelion in the cleft
           A broken pavement may have left,
           Is like the star that, still and sweet,
           Shines where the house-tops almost meet.

          "I like a little; all the rest
           Is somewhere; and our Lord knows best
           How the whole robe hath grace for them
           Who only touch the garment's hem."

At the bottom, in small capitals, was the signature,--BEL
BREE.

"I don't understand," said Bel, bewildered. "What is it? Who did
it?"

"It is a proof," said Mrs. Scherman. "A proof-sheet. And here is
another kind of proof that came with it. Your spring song is going
into the May number of 'First and Last.'"

Mrs. Scherman reached out a slip of paper, printed and filled in.

It was a publisher's check for fifteen dollars.

"You see I'm very unselfish, Bel," she said. "I'm going to work the
very way to lose you."

Bel's eyes flashed up wide at her.

The way to lose her! Why, nobody had ever got such a hold upon her
before! The printed verses and the money were wonderful surprises,
but they were not the surprise that had gone straight into her
heart, and dropped a grapple there. Mrs. Scherman had believed in
her; and she had _kissed_ her. Bel Bree would never forget that,
though she should live to sing songs of all the years.

"When you can earn money like this, of course I cannot expect to
keep you in my kitchen," said Mrs. Scherman, answering her look.

"I might never do it again in all my life," sensible Bel replied.
"And I hope you'll keep me somewhere. It wouldn't be any reason, I
think, because one little green leaf has budded out, for a plant to
say that it would not be kept growing in the ground any longer. I
couldn't go and set up a poem-factory, without a home and a living
for the poems to grow up out of. I'm pleased I can write!" she
exclaimed, brimming up suddenly with the pleasure she had but half
stopped to realize. "I _thought_ I could. But I know very well that
the best and brightest things I've ever thought have come into my
head over the ironing-board or the bread-making. Even at home. And
_here_,--why, Mrs. Scherman, it's _living_ in a poem here! And if
you can be in the very foundation part of such living, you're in the
realest place of all, I think. I don't believe poetry can be skimmed
off the top, till it has risen up from the bottom!"

"But you _ought_ to come into my parlor, among my friends! People
would be glad to get you into their parlors, by and by, when you
have made the name you can make. I've no business to keep you down.
And you don't know yourself. You won't stay."

"Just please wait and see," said Bel. "I haven't a great deal of
experience in going about in parlors; but I don't think I should
much like it,--_that_ way. I'd rather keep on being the woman that
made the name, than to run round airing it. I guess it would keep
better."

"I see I can't advise you. I shouldn't dare to meddle with
inspirations. But I'm proud, and glad, Bel; and you're my friend!
The rest will all work out right, somehow."

"Thank you, dear Mrs. Scherman," said Bel, her voice full of
feeling. "And--if you please--will you have the grouse broiled
to-day, or roasted with bread-sauce?"

At that, the two young women laughed out, in each other's faces.

Bel stopped first.

"It isn't half so funny as it sounds," she said. "It's part of the
poetry; the rhyme's inside; it is to everything. We're human people:
that's the way we get it."

And Bel went away, and stuffed the grouse, and grated her
bread-crumbs, and sang over her work,--not out loud with her lips,
but over and over to a merry measure in her mind,--

          "Everything comes to its luck some day:
           I've got chickens! What will folks say?"

"I'm solving more than I set out to do," Sin Scherman said to her
husband. "Westover was nothing to it. I know one thing, though, that
I'll do next."

"_One_ thing is reasonable," said Frank. "What is it?"

"Take her to York with us, this summer. Row out on the river with
her. Sit on the rocks, and read and sew, and play with the children.
Show her the ocean. She never saw it in all her life."

"How wonderful is 'one thing' in the mind of a woman! It is a
germ-cell, that holds all things."

"Thank you, my dear. If I weren't helping you to soup, I'd get up
and make you a courtesy. But what a grand privilege it is for a man
to live with a woman, after he has found that out! And how cosmical
a woman feels herself when her capacity is recognized!"

Mrs. Scherman has told her plan to Bel. Kate also has a plan for the
two summer months in which the household must be broken up.

"I mean to see the mountains myself," she said, boldly. "I don't see
why I shouldn't go to the country. There are homes there that want
help, as well as here. I can get my living where the living goes.
That's just where it fays in, different from other work. Bel knows
places where I could get two dollars a week just for a little
helping round; or I could even afford to pay board, and buy a little
time for resting. I shall have clothes to make, and fix over. It
always took all I could earn, before, to keep me from hand to mouth.
I never saw six months' wages all together, in my life. I feel real
rich."

"I will pay you half wages for the two months," said Mrs. Scherman,
"if you will come back to me in September. And next year, if we all
keep together, it will be your turn, if you like, to go with me."

Kate feels the spring in her heart, knowing that she is to have a
piece of the summer. The horse-chestnut tree in the yard is not a
mockery to her. She has a property in every promise that its great
brown buds are making.

"The pleasant weather used to be like the spring-suits," she said.
"Something making up for other people. Nothing to me, except more
work, with a little difference. Now, somewhere, the hills are
getting green for me! I'm one of the meek, that inherit the earth!"

"You are earning a _whole_ living," Bel said, reverting to her
favorite and comprehensive conclusion.

"And yet,--_somebody_ has got to run machines," said Kate.

"But _all_ the bodies haven't. That is the mistake we have been
making. That keeps the pay low, and makes it horrid. There's a
_little_ more room now, where you and I were. Anyhow, we Yankee
girls have a right to our turn at the home-wheels. If we had been as
cute as we thought we were, we should have found it out before."

Bel Bree has written half a dozen little poems at odd times, since
the rhyme that began her fortune. Mr. Stalworth says they are
stamped with her own name, every one; breezy, and freshly delicious.
For that very reason, of course, people will not believe, when they
see the name in print, that it is a real name. It is so much easier
to believe in little tricks of invention, than in things that simply
come to pass by a wonderful, beautiful determination, because they
belong so. They think the poem is a trick of invention, too. They
think that of almost everything that they see in print. Their
incredulity is marvelously credulous! There is no end to that which
mortals may contrive; but the limit is such a measurable one to that
which can really be! We slip our human leash so easily, and get
outside of all creation, and the "Divinity that shapes our ends," to
shape and to create, ourselves!

For my part, the more stories I write out, the more I learn how,
even in fiction, things happen and take relation according to some
hidden reality; that we have only to stand by, and see the shiftings
and combinings, and with what care and honesty we may, to put them
down.

If there is anything in this story that you cannot credit,--if you
cannot believe in such a relation, and such a friendship, and such a
mutual service, as Asenath Scherman's and Bel Bree's,--if you cannot
believe that Bel Bree may at this moment be ironing Mrs. Scherman's
damask table-cloths, and as the ivy leaf or morning-glory pattern
comes out under the polish, some beautiful thought in her takes line
and shade under the very rub of labor, and shows itself as it would
have done no other way, and that by and by it will shine on a
printed page, made substantive in words,--then, perhaps, you have
only not lived quite long--or deep--enough. There is a more real and
perfect architecture than any that has ever got worked out in stone,
or even sketched on paper.

Neither Boston, nor the world, is "finished" yet. There may be many
a burning and rebuilding, first. Meanwhile, we will tell what we can
see.

And that word sends me back to Bel herself, of whom this present
seeing and telling can read and recite no further.

Are you dissatisfied to leave her here? Is it a pity, you think,
that the little glimmer of romance in Leicester Place meant nothing,
after all? There are blind turns in the labyrinth of life. Would you
have our Bel lost in a blind turn?

The _right and the wrong_ settled it, as they settle all things.
The right and the wrong are the reins with which we are guided into
the very best, sooner or later; yes,--sooner _and_ later. If we will
go God's way, we shall have manifold more in this present world, and
in the world to come life everlasting.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP.


Mr. and Mrs. Kirkbright went away to New York on the afternoon of
their marriage.

Miss Euphrasia went up to Brickfields. Sylvie Argenter was to follow
her on Thursday. It had been settled that she should remain with
Desire, who, with her husband, would reach home on Saturday.

It was a sweet, pleasant spring day, when Sylvie Argenter, with some
last boxes and packages, took the northward train for Tillington.

She was going to a life of use and service. She was going into a
home; a home that not only made a fitting place for her in it, and
was perfect in itself, but that, with noble plan and enlargement,
found way to reach its safety and benediction, and the contagion of
its spirit, over souls that would turn toward it, come under its
rule, and receive from it, as their only shelter and salvation; over
a neighborhood that was to be a planting of Hope,--a heavenly
feudality.

Sylvie's own dreams of a possible future for herself were only
purple lights upon a far horizon.

It seemed a very great way off, any bringing to speech and result
the mute, infrequent signs of what was yet the very real, secret
strength and joy and hope of her girl's heart.

She had a thought of Rodney Sherrett that she was sure she had a
right to. That was all she wanted, yet. Of course, Rodney was not
ready to marry; he was too young; he was not much older than she
was, and that was very young for a man. She did not even think about
it; she recognized the whole position without thinking.

She remembered vividly the little way-station in Middlesex, where he
had bought the ferns, that day in last October; she thought of him
as the train ran slowly alongside the platform at East Keaton. She
wondered if he would not sometimes come up for a Sunday; to spend it
with his uncle and his Aunt Euphrasia. It was a secret gladness to
her that she was to be where he partly, and very affectionately,
belonged. She was sure she should see him, now and then. Her life
looked pleasant to her, its current setting alongside one current,
certainly, of his.

She sat thinking how he had come up behind her that day in the
drawing-room car, and of all the happy nonsense they had begun to
talk, in such a hurry, together. She was lost in the imagination of
that old surprise, living it over again, remembering how it had
seemed when she suddenly knew that it was he who touched her
shoulder. Her thought of him was a backward thought, with a sense in
it of his presence just behind her again, perhaps, if she should
turn her head,--which she would not do, for all the world, to break
the spell,--when suddenly,--face to face,--through the car-window,
she awoke to his eyes and smile.

"How did you know?" she asked, as he came in and took the seat
beside her. Then she blushed to think what she had taken for
granted.

"I didn't," he answered; "except as a Yankee always knows things,
and a cat comes down upon her feet. I am taking a week's holiday,
and I began it two days sooner, that I might run up to see Aunt
Effie before I go down to Boston to meet my father. The steamer
will be due by Saturday. It is my first holiday since I went to
Arlesbury. I'm turning into a regular old Gradgrind, Miss Sylvie."

Sylvie smiled at him, as if a regular old Gradgrind were just the
most beautiful and praiseworthy creature a bright, hearty young
fellow could turn into.

"You'd better not encourage me," he said, shaking his head. "It
would be a dreadful thing if I should get sordid, you know. I'm not
apt to stop half way in anything; and I'm awfully in earnest now
about saving up money."

He had to stop there. He was coming close to motives, and these he
could say nothing about.

But a sudden stop, in speech as in music, is sometimes more
significant than any stricken note.

Sylvie did not speak at once, either. She was thinking what
different reasons there might be, for spending or saving; how there
might be hardest self-denial in most uncalculating extravagance.

When she found that they were growing awkwardly quiet, she said,--"I
suppose the right thing is to remember that there is neither virtue
nor blame in just saving or not saving."

"My father lost a good deal by the fire," said Rodney. "More than he
thought, at first. He is coming home sooner, in consequence. I'm
very glad I did not go abroad. I should have been just whirled out
of everything, if I had. As it is, I'm in a place; I've got a lever
planted. It's no time now for a fellow to look round for a
foothold."

"You like Arlesbury?" asked Sylvie. "I think it must be a lovely
place."

"Why?" said Rodney, taken by surprise.

"From the piece of it you sent me in the winter."

"Oh! those ferns? I'm glad you liked them. There's something nice
and plucky about those little things, isn't there?"

It was every word he could think of to reply. He had a provoked
perception that was not altogether nice and plucky, of himself, just
then. But that was because the snow was still unlifted from him. He
was under a burden of coldness and constraint. Somebody ought to
come and take it away. It was time. The spring, that would not be
kept back, was here.

He had not said a word to Sylvie about her mother. How could he
speak of what had left her alone in the world, and not say that he
wanted to make a new world for her? That he had longed for it
through all her troubles, and that this, and nothing else, was what
he was keeping his probation for?

So they came to Tillington at last, and there had been between them
only little drifting talk of the moment, that told nothing.

After all, do we not, for a great part, drift through life so,
giving each other crumbs off the loaf that will only seem to break
in that paltry way? And by and by, when the journey is over, do we
not wonder that we could not have given better and more at a time?
Yet the crumbs have the leaven and the sweetness of the loaf in
them; the commonest little wayside things are charged full of
whatever is really within us. God's own love is broken small for us.
"This is my Body, broken for you."

If life were nothing but what gets phrased and substanced, the world
might as well be rolled up and laid away again in darkness.

Sylvie had a handful of checks; Rodney took them from her, and went
out to the end of the platform to find the boxes. Two vehicles had
been driven over from Hill-hope to meet her; an open spring-wagon
for the luggage, and a chaise-top buggy to convey herself.

Trunks, boxes, and the great padlocked basket were speedily piled
upon the wagon; then the two men who had come jumped up together to
the front seat of the same, and Sylvie saw that it was left for her
and Rodney to proceed together for the seven-mile drive.

Rodney came back to her with an alert and felicitous air. How could
he help the falling out of this? Of course he could not ride upon
the wagon and leave a farm-boy to charioteer Sylvie.

"Shall you be afraid of me?" he asked, as he tossed in his valise
for a footstool, and carefully bestowed Sylvie's shawl against the
back, to cushion her more comfortably. "Do you suppose we can manage
to get over there without running down a bake-shop?"

"Or a cider-mill," said Sylvie, laughing. "You will have to adapt
your exploits to circumstances."

Up and down, through that beautiful, wild hill-country, the brown
country roadway wound; now going straight up a pitch that looked as
perpendicular as you approached it as the side of a barn; then
flinging itself down such a steep as seemed at every turn to come to
a blank end, and to lead off with a plunge, into air; the
water-bars, ridged across at rough intervals, girding it to the
bosom of the mountain, and breaking the accelerated velocity of the
descending wheels. Sylvie caught her breath, more than once; but she
did it behind shut lips, with only a dilatation of her nostrils. She
was so afraid that Rodney might think she doubted his driving.

The woods were growing tender with fretwork of swelling buds, and
beautiful with bright, young hemlock-tips; there was a twittering
and calling of birds all through the air; the first little breaths
and ripples of spring music before the whole gay, summer burst of
song gushed forth.

The fields lay rich in brown seams, where the plough had newly
furrowed them. Farmers were throwing in seed of barley and spring
wheat. The cattle were standing in the low sunshine, in barn-doors
and milking-yards. Sheep were browsing the little buds on the
pasture bushes.

The April day would soon be over. To-morrow might bring a cold wind,
perhaps; but the winter had been long and hard; and after such, we
believe in the spring pleasantness when it comes.

"What a little way brings us into a different world!" said Sylvie as
they rode along. "Just back there in the city, you can hardly
believe in these hills."

Her own words reminded her.

"I suppose we shall find, sometime," she said gently, "that the
other world is only a little way out."

"I've been very sorry for you, Sylvie," said Rodney. "I hope you
know that."

His slight abruptness told her how the thought had been ready and
pressing for speech, underneath all their casual talk.

And he had dropped the prefix from her name.

He had not meant to, but he could not go back and put it on. It was
another little falling out that he could not help. The things he
could not help were the most comfortable.

"Mother would have had a very hard time if she had lived," said
Sylvie. "I am glad for her. It was a great deal better. And it came
so tenderly! I had dreaded sickness and pain for her."

"It has been all hard for you. I hope it will be easier now. I hope
it will always be easier."

"I am going to live with Mrs. Kirkbright," said Sylvie.

"Tell me about my new aunt," said Rodney.

Sylvie was glad to go on about Desire, about the wedding, about
Hill-hope, and the plans for living there.

"I think it will be almost like heaven," she said. "It will be home
and happiness; all that people look forward to for themselves. And
yet, right alongside, there will be the work and the help. It will
open right out into it, as heaven does into earth. Mr. Kirkbright is
a grand man."

"Yes. He's one of the ten-talent people. But I suppose we can all do
something. It is good to have some little one-horse teams for the
light jobs."

"I never could _be_ Desire," said Sylvie. "But I am glad, to work
with her. I am glad to live one of the little lives."

There would always be a boy and girl simpleness between these two,
and in their taking of the world together. And that is good for the
world, as well. It cannot be all made of mountains. If all were high
and grand, it would be as if nothing were. Heaven itself is not
built like that.

"There goes some of Uncle Christopher's stuff, I suppose," said
Rodney, a while afterward, as they came to the top of a long ascent.
He pointed to a great loaded wain that stood with its three powerful
horses on the crest of a forward hill. It was piled high up with
tiling and drain-pipe, packed with straw. The long cylinders showed
their round mouths behind, like the mouths of cannon.

"A nice cargo for these hills, I should think."

"They have brakes on the wheels, of course," said Sylvie. "And the
horses are strong. That must be for the new houses. They will soon
make all those things here. Mr. Kirkbright has large contracts for
brick, already. He has been sending down specimens. They say the
clay is of remarkably fine quality."

"We shall have to get by that thing, presently," said Rodney. "I
hope the horse will take it well."

"Are you trying to frighten me?" asked Sylvie, smiling. "I'm used to
these roads. I have spent half a summer here, you know."

But Rodney knew that it was the "being used" that would be the
question with the horse. He doubted if the little country beast had
ever seen drain-pipe before. He had once driven Red Squirrel past a
steam boiler that was being transported on a truck. He remembered
the writhe with which the animal had doubled himself, and the side
spring he had made. It was growing dusk, now, also. They were not
more than a mile from Brickfield Basin, and the sun was dropping
behind the hills.

"I shall take you out, and lead him by," he said. "I've no wish to
give you another spill. We won't go on through life in that way."

It was quite as well that they had only another mile to go. Rodney
was keeping his promise, but the thread of it was wearing very thin.

They rode slowly up the opposite slope, then waited, in their turn,
on the top, to give the team time to reach the next level.

They heard it creak and grind as it wore heavily down, taking up
the whole track with careful zigzag tackings; they could see, as it
turned, how the pole stood sharp up between the shoulders of the
straining wheel horses, as their haunches pressed out either way,
and their backs hollowed, and their noses came together, and the
driver touched them dexterously right and left upon their flanks to
bring them in again.

"Uncle Kit has a good teamster there," said Rodney.

Just against the foot of the next rise, they overtook him. The gray
nag that Rodney drove pricked his ears and stretched his head up,
and began to take short, cringing steps, as they drew near the
formidable, moving mass.

Rodney jumped out, and keeping eye and hand upon him, helped down
Sylvie also. Then he threw the long reins over his arm, and took the
horse by the bridle.

The animal made a half parenthesis of himself, curving skittishly,
and watching jealously, as he went by the frightsome pile.

"You see it was as well not to risk it," Rodney said, as Sylvie came
up with him beyond. "He would have had us down there among the
blackberry vines. He's all right now. Will you get in?"

"Let us walk on to the top," said Sylvie. "It is so pleasant to feel
one's feet upon the ground."

They kept on, accordingly; the slow team rumbling behind them. At
the top, was a wide, beautiful level; oak-trees and maples grew
along the roadside, and fields stretched out along a table land to
right and left. Before them, lying in the golden mist of twilight,
was a sea of distant hill-tops,--purple and shadow-black and gray.
The sky bent down its tender, mellow sphere, and touched them
softly.

Sylvie stood still, with folded hands, and Rodney stopped the
horse. A rod or two back, just at the edge of the level, the loaded
wagon had stopped also.

"Hills,--and the sunset,--and stillness," said Sylvie. "They always
seem like heaven."

Rodney stood with his right hand, from which fell the looped reins,
reached up and resting on the saddle.

"I never saw a sight like that before," he said.

While they looked, the evening star trembled out through the clear
saffron, above the floating mist that hung among the hills.

"O, they never can help it!" exclaimed Sylvie, suddenly.

"Help it? Who?" asked Rodney, wondering.

"Beginning again. Growing good. Those people who are coming up to
Hill-hope. There's a man coming, with his wife; a young man, who got
into bad ways, and took to drinking. Mr. Vireo has been watching and
advising him so long! He married them, five years ago, and they have
two little children. The wife is delicate; she has worried through
everything. She has taken in working-men's washing, to earn the
rent; and he had a good trade, too; he was a plasterer. He has
really tried; but it was no use in the city; it was all around him.
And he lost character and chances; the bosses wouldn't have him, he
said. When he was trying most, sometimes, they wouldn't believe in
him; and then there would come idle days, and he would meet old
companions, and get led off, and then there would be weeks of
misery. Now he is coming away from it all. There is a little cottage
ready, with a garden; the little wife is so happy! He _can't_ get it
here; and he will have work at his trade, and will learn
brickmaking. Do you know, I think a place like this, where such
work is doing, is almost better than heaven, where it is all done,
Rodney!"

She spoke his name, as he had hers a little while ago, without
thinking. He turned his face toward her with a look which kindled
into sudden light at that last word, but which had warmed all
through before with the generous pathos of what she told him, and
the earnest, simple way of it.

"I've found out that even in our own affairs, _making_ is better
than ready-made," he said. "This last year has been the best year of
my life. If my father had given me fifty thousand dollars, and told
me I might--have all my own way with it,--I shouldn't have thanked
him as much to-day, as I do. But I wish that steamer were in, and he
were here! He has got something which belongs to me, and I want him
to give it back."

After enunciating this little riddle, Rodney changed hands with his
reins, and faced about toward the vehicle, reaching his other to
Sylvie.

"You had better jump in," he said; and there was a tone and an
inflection at the pause, as if another word, that would have been
tenderly spoken, hung refrained upon it. "We must get well ahead of
that old catapult."

They drove on rapidly along the level; then they came to the long,
gradual slope that brought them down into Brickfields.

To the right, just before reaching the Basin, a turn struck off that
skirted round, partly ascending again until it fell into the Cone
Hill road and so led direct to Hill-hope.

They could see the buildings, grouped picturesquely against rocks
and pines and down against the root of the green hill. They had all
been painted of a light gray or slate color, with red roofs.

They passed on, down into the shadows, where trees were thick and
dark. A damp, rich smell of the woods was about them,--a different
atmosphere from the breath of the hill-top. They heard the tinkle of
little unseen streams, and the far-off, foaming plunge of the
cascades.

Suddenly, there came a sound behind them like the rush of an
avalanche; a noise that seemed to fill up all the space of the air,
and to gather itself down toward them on every side alike.

"O, Rodney, turn!" cried Sylvie.

But there was a horrible second in which he could not know how to
turn.

He did not stop to look, even. He sprang, with one leap, he knew not
how,--over step or dasher,--to the horse's head. He seized him by
the bridle, and pulled him off the road, into a thicket of
bush-branches, in a hollow rough with stones.

The wheels caught fast; Rodney clung to the horse, who tried to
rear; Sylvie sat still on the seat sloped with the sharp cant of the
half-overturned vehicle.

There was only a single instant. Down, with the awful roar of an
earthquake, came crashing swift and headlong, passing within a
hand's breadth of their wheel, the enormous, toppling, loaded team;
its three strong horses in a wild, plunging gallop; heels, heads,
haunches, one dark, frantic, struggling tumble and rush. An instant
more, of paralyzed breathlessness, and then a thundering fall, that
made the ground quiver under their feet; then a stillness more
suddenly dreadful than the noise. A great cloud of dust rose slowly
up into the air, and showed dimly in the dusky light.

The gray horse quieted, cowed by the very terror and the hush.
Sylvie slipped down from the tilting buggy, and found her feet upon
a stone.

Rodney reached out one hand, and she came to his side. He put his
arm around her, and drew her close.

"My darling little Sylvie!" he said.

She turned her face, and leaned it down upon his shoulder.

"O, Rodney, the poor man is killed!"

But as they stood so, a figure came toward them, over the high
water-bar below which they had stopped.

"For God's sake, is anybody hurt?" asked a strange, hoarse voice
with a tremble in it.

"Nobody!"

"O, are you the driver? I thought you must be killed! How
thankful!"--And Sylvie sobbed on Rodney's shoulder.

"Can I help you?" asked the man.

"No, look after your horses." And the man went on, down into the
dust, where the wreck was.

"We'll go, and send help to you," shouted Rodney.

Then he backed the gray horse carefully out upon the road again.

"Will you dare get in?" he asked of Sylvie.

"I do not think we had better. How can we tell how it is down there?
We may not be able to pass."

"It is below the turn, I think. But come,--we'll walk."

He took the bridle again, and gave his other hand to Sylvie. Holding
each other so, they went along.

When they came to the turn, they could see, just beyond the mass of
ruin; the great wagon, three wheels in the air,--one rolled away
into the ditch; the broken freight, flung all across the road, and
lying piled about the wagon. One horse was dead,--buried underneath.
Another lay motionless, making horrid moans. The teamster was
freeing the third--the leader, which stood safe--from chains and
harness.

Leading him, the man came up with Rodney and Sylvie, as they turned
into the side road.

"I knew you were just ahead, when it happened. I thought you were
gone for certain."

"There was a Mercy over us all!" said Sylvie, with sweet, tremulous
intenseness.

The rough man lifted his hand to his bare head. Rodney clasped
tighter the little fingers that lay within his own.

"What did happen?" he asked.

"The brake-rod broke; the pole-strap gave way; it was all in a heap
in a minute. I saw it was no use; I had to jump. And then I thought
of you. I'm glad you saw me, sir. You know I was sober."

"I know you were sober, and managing most skillfully. I had been
saying that."

"Thank you, sir. It's an awful job."

"Hark!" said Sylvie. "There's the man with the trunks."

"I forgot all about him," said Rodney.

"That's a fact," said the teamster. "Turn down here, to let him by.
Hallo!"

"Hallo! Come to grief?"

"We just have, then. Go ahead, will you, and bring back--_something
to shoot with_," he added, in a lower tone, and coming
close,--remembering Sylvie. "I had a crow-bar, but it's lost in the
jumble. I'll stay here, now."

The wagon drove by, rapidly. The man led his horse down by the wall,
to wait there. Sylvie and Rodney, hand in hand, walked on.

Sylvie shivered with the horrible excitement; her teeth chattered; a
nervous trembling was taking hold of her.

Rodney put his arm round her again. "Don't tremble, dear," he said.

"O, Rodney! What were we kept alive for?"

"For each other," whispered Rodney.




CHAPTER XXXV.

HILL-HOPE.


They were sitting together, the next day, on the rock below the
cascade, in the warm sunshine.

Aunt Euphrasia knew all about it; Aunt Euphrasia had let them go
down there together. She was as content as Rodney in the thing that
could not now be helped.

"I've broken my promise," said Rodney to Sylvie. "I agreed with my
father that I wouldn't be engaged for two years."

"Why, we aren't engaged,--yet,--are we?" asked Sylvie, with
bewitching surprise.

"I don't know," said Rodney, his old, merry, mischievous twinkle
coming in the corners of his eyes, as he flashed them up at her. "I
think we've got the refusal of each other!"

"Well. We'll keep it so. We'll wait. You shall not break any promise
for me," said Sylvie, still sweetly obtuse.

"I'm satisfied with that way of looking at it," said Rodney,
laughing out. "Unless--you mean to be as cunning about everything
else, Sylvie. In that case, I don't know; I'm afraid you'd be
dangerous."

"I wonder if I'm always going to be dangerous to you," said Sylvie,
gravely, taking up the word. "I always get you into an accident."

"When we take matters quietly, the way they were meant to go, we
shall leave off being hustled, I suppose," said Rodney, just as
gravely. "There has certainly been intent in the way we have
been--thrown together!"

"I don't believe you ought to say such things, Rodney,--yet! You are
talking just as if"--

"We weren't waiting. O, yes! I'm glad you invented that little
temporary arrangement. But it's a difficult one to carry out. I
shall be gladder when my father comes. I'm tired of being
Casabianca. I don't see how we can talk at all. Mayn't I tell you
about a little house there is at Arlesbury, with a square porch and
a three-windowed room over it, where anybody could sit and
sew--among plants and things--and see all up and down the road, to
and from the mills? A little brown house, with turf up to the
door-stone, and only a hundred dollars a year? Mayn't I tell you how
much I've saved up, and how I like being a real working man with a
salary, just as you liked being one of the Other Girls?"

"Yes; you may tell me that; that last," said Sylvie, softly. "You
may tell me anything you like about yourself."

"Then I must tell you that I never should have been good for
anything if it hadn't been for you."

"O, dear!" said Sylvie. "I don't see how we _can_ talk. It keeps
coming back again. I've had all those plants kept safe that you sent
me, Rodney," she began, briskly, upon a fresh tack.

"Those very ivies? Ah, the little three-windowed room!"

"Rodney! I didn't think you were so unprincipled!" said Sylvie,
getting up. "I wouldn't have come down here, if I had known there
was a promise! I shall certainly help you keep it. I shall go away."

She turned round, and met a gentleman coming down along the slope of
the smooth, broad rock.

"Mr. Sherrett!--Rodney!"

Rodney sprang to his feet.

"My boy! How are you?"

"Father! When--how--did you come?"

"I came to Tillington by the late train last night, and have just
driven over. I went to Arlesbury yesterday."

"But the steamer! She wasn't due till Sunday. You sailed the
_ninth_?"

"No. I exchanged passages with a friend who was detained in London.
I came by the Palmyra. But you don't let me speak to Sylvie."

He pronounced her name with a kind emphasis; he had turned and taken
her hand, after the first grasp of Rodney's.

"Father, I've broken my promise; but I don't think anybody could
have helped it. You couldn't have helped it yourself."

"I've seen Aunt Euphrasia. I've been here almost an hour. I have
thanked God that nothing is broken _but_ the promise, Rodney; and I
think the term of that was broken only because the intent had been
so faithfully kept. I'm satisfied with _one_ year. I believe all the
rest of your years will be safer and better for having this little
lady to promise to, and to help you keep your word."

And he bent down his splendid gray head, with the dark eyes looking
softly at her, and kissed Sylvie on the forehead.

Sylvie stood still a moment, with a very lovely, happy, shy look
upon her downcast face; then she lifted it up quickly, with a clear,
earnest expression.

"I hope you think, Mr. Sherrett,--I hope you feel sure,"--she said,
"that I wouldn't have been engaged to Rodney while there was a
promise?"

"Not more than you could possibly help," said Mr. Sherrett,
smiling.

"Not the very least little bit!" said Sylvie, emphatically; and then
they all three laughed together.

       *       *       *       *       *

I don't know why everything should have happened as it did, just in
these few days; except--that this book was to be all printed by the
twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in.

That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr.
Dakie Thayne.

He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him
close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had
obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his
knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver: and the result
had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the
railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of
five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek
payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter.

Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to
investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,--I
am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part
of Dakie Thayne, was--in some proportion at least,--a piece of a
horse-shoe!

If you have not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know
what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it
had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,--their little
section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,--might be
made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said
to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks.

"I've always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,--or if ever I
came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good
with it,--that there would be one special way I should like to take.
I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into
the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and
wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single
bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people
who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are
obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who
are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a
mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people.
I've been a Ruth Pinch myself, you see; and I know all about it, Mr.
John Westlock!"

So I know they looked about for crafty little chances to piece out
and supplement small ways and means; to put little traps of good
luck in the way for people to stumble upon,--and to act the part
generally of a human limited providence, which is a better thing
than fairy godmothers, or enchanted cats, or frogs under the bridge
at the world's end, in which guise the gentle charities clothed
themselves in the old elf fables, that were told, I truly believe,
to be lived out in real doing, as much as the New Testament Parables
were. And a great deal of the manifold responsibility that Mr. Dakie
Thayne undertakes, as broker or agent in the concerns of others, is
undertaken with a deliberate ulterior design of this sort. I think
Mr. Farron Saftleigh probably was made to pay about three thousand
dollars of the sum he had wheedled Mrs. Argenter out of. Dakie
Thayne makes things yield of themselves as far as they will; he
brings capacity and character to bear upon his ends as well as
money; he knows his money would not last forever if he did not.

Mr. Sherrett and Rodney stayed at Hill-hope over the Sunday. Mr. and
Mrs. Kirkbright arrived on Saturday morning.

There was a first home-service in the Chapel-Room that looked out
upon the Rock, and into which the conservatory already gave its
greenness and sweetness, that first Sunday after Easter.

Christopher Kirkbright read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the
day; the Prayer, that God "who had given his only Son to die for our
sins, and to rise again for our justification, would grant them so
to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might
always serve Him in pureness and truth"; the Assurance of "the
victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in the Son of
God," who came "not by water only, but by water and blood"; and that
"the spirit and the water and the blood agree in one,"--in our
redemption; the Story of that First Day of the week, when Jesus came
back to his disciples, after his resurrection, and said, "Peace be
unto you," _showing them his hands and his side_.

He spoke to them of the Blood of Christ, which is the Pain of God
for every one of us; which touches the quick of our own souls where
their life is joined to his or else is dead. Of how, when we feel
it, we know that this Divine Pain comes down that we may die by it
to sin and live again to justification, in pureness and truth, that
the Lord shows us his wounds for us, and waits to pronounce his
peace upon us; because _He suffers_ till we are at peace. That so
his goodness leads us to repentance; that the blood of suffering,
and the water of cleansing, and the spirit of life renewed, agree in
one, that if we receive the one,--if we bear the pain with which He
touches us,--we shall also receive the other.

"Bear, therefore, whatever crucifixion you have to bear, because of
your wrong-doing. We, indeed, suffer justly; but He, who hath done
nothing amiss, suffers at our side. 'If we are planted together in
the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his
resurrection;' our old life is crucified with Him, that the body of
sin might be destroyed. 'We are dead unto sin, but alive unto God,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.'"

Mary Moxall was there, clothed and in her right mind; her baby on
her lap. Good Mrs. Crumford, the mother-matron, sat beside her.
Andrew Dorray, the plasterer, and his wife, Annie, were there. Men
and women from the farmhouse and the cottages, dressed in their
Sabbath best; and little children, looking in with steadfast,
wondering eyes, at the open conservatory door, upon the vines and
blooms steeped in sunshine, and mingling their sweet odors with the
scent of the warm, moist earth in which they grew.

They would all have pinks and rosebuds to carry away with them, to
remember the Sunday by, and to be forever linked, in their tender
color and fragrance, with the dim apprehension of somewhat holy.
There would be an association for them of the heavenly things unseen
with the heavenliest things that are seen.

Mr. Kirkbright had given especial pains and foresight to the filling
of this little greenhouse. He meant that there should be a summer
pleasantness at Hill-hope from the very first.

After dinner he and Desire walked up and down the long front upper
gallery upon which their own rooms and their guest-rooms opened, and
whence the many windows on the other hand gave the whole outlook
upon Farm and Basin, the smoking kilns, the tidy little homes
already established, and the buildings that were making ready for
more.

Christopher Kirkbright told his wife of many things he hoped to
accomplish. He pointed out here and there what might be done. Over
there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the
spring. There was a quarry in yonder hill. Down here, through that
left hand hollow and ravine, would run their bit of railroad.

"A little world of itself might almost grow up here on these two
hundred acres," he said.

"And for the home,--you must make that large and beautiful, Desire!
We are not shut up here to guard and rule a penitentiary; we are to
bring the best and sweetest and most beautiful life possible to us,
close to the life we want to help. There is room for them and us;
there is opportunity for their world and ours to touch each other
and grow toward one. We must have friends here, Daisy"; (she let
_him_ call her "Daisy"; had he not the right to give her a new name
for her new life?) "friends to enjoy the delicious summers, and to
make the long winters full of holiday times. You must invent
delights as well as uses: delights that will be uses. It must be so
for _your_ sake; I must have my Desire satisfied,--content, in ways
that perhaps she herself would not find out her need in."

"_Is_ not your Desire satisfied?"

"What a blessed little double name you have! Yes, Daisy, the very
Desire of my heart has come to me!"

Rodney and Sylvie walked down again to the Cascade Rock, and
finished their talk together,--this April number of it, I
mean,--about the brown house and the three-windowed, sunny room, and
the grass plot where they would play croquet, and the road to the
mills that was shaded all the way down, so that she could walk with
her bonnet off to meet him when he was coming up to tea. About the
ivies that the "good Miss Goodwyns" had kept safe and thriving at
Dorbury, and the furniture that Sylvie had stored in a loft in the
Bank Block. How pretty the white frilled curtains would be in the
porch room!

"And the interest of the five thousand dollars will be all I shall
ever want to spend for anything!"

"We shall be quite rich people, Sylvie. We must take care not to
grow proud and snobbish."

"We had much better walk than ride, Rodney. I think that is the
riddle that all our spills have been meant to read us."





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