“It’s my opinion,” said Molly Poppleton, standing with her arms akimbo
and facing Miss Grant as she entered the kitchen one morning shortly
after breakfast, “that them three-cent girls need ‘tendin’ to.” She set
her lips firmly and then returned to the polishing of her range.
Miss Hannah went on with her work. She was rubbing pumpkin through a
colander and reducing it to the velvety texture she always required in
her pies. She waited calmly for Molly to go on with her reasons, as she
knew she would soon. Molly finished the oven door and stood up again.
“Yes, they need ‘tendin’ to bad. If you’d just go up to their room once
you’d find out. There’s a stack of paper novils in their closet knee
deep, an’ there’s pictures round that room of women from the-_ay_-tres,
without much clo’es on, that are perfickly scand’lous. Besides, they’ve
got a picture of them two took in a tin type down to Atlantic City with
bathing suits on, an’ two young fellers along side of ’em without much
on but a little underclo’es. They are grinning fit to kill, and look
real silly. No decent girls would have a picture took like that, let
alone keep it round in sight afterward.”
“Well, Molly, you know all girls have not been brought up alike,” said
Miss Hannah, as she measured out the cinnamon and ginger. “Molly, bring
me the big yellow bowl and the molasses jug.”
“I should hope not,” said Molly, as she put the jug down on the table
with a thump, and went back to her range. “Not like them, anyway. You
don’t know all. They have any amount of little pink and blue tickets
lying round droppin’ out of pockets and the like, an’ I give that one
they call Mamie one I picked up in the hall, thinkin’ it was something
valuable, an’ she laughed an’ said it was no good, just an old
the-_ay_-tre ticket, been used. ‘My land!’ says I, not being able to
keep still. ‘If all them round your room is the-_ay_-tre tickets, you
must’ve been an awful lot!’ Then she giggled an’ got red an’ says, ‘Yes,
most every night now,’ an’ the other one, the one they call Carrie, she
spoke up, and says she, ‘Yes, she’s got plenty of gentlemen friends,
Molly, an’ so have I,’ an’ then they both laughed and went out. Now I
s’pose it ain’t none of my business, but I must say them girls ought to
be back with their mothers. They can’t be over fifteen a day, or sixteen
anyway. They ought to be in bed every night by nine o’clock. They ain’t
fit to sit at the same table with Miss Celia with their bangs and their
dirty teeth and black finger nails. The fact is I’d like to give ’em
both a good bath anyway.”
Molly slammed out of the kitchen and Miss Hannah heard her sweeping the
dining-room with all her might and main.
She went on measuring her milk and beating her eggs, and fashioning the
flaky crust in the pie pans, and thinking. The fact was she had been
troubled about those two girls herself. She felt that they needed a
great deal of help and so far she had been utterly unable to approach
them. They seemed shy and uncomfortable when she came near them, and had
grown silent at the table, too, unless the tenor brakeman was present.
Then the three carried on a bantering conversation in suppressed tones,
with half glances toward the others. Miss Grant wondered what it was
that there always seemed to be some people about her whose hearts she
could not reach. It was just so with Nettie, she never could make any
headway in training that child. As a little girl, she had been sullen
and silent when she was remonstrated with by her aunt for any fault, and
as a young woman she had been impertinent and cold for days after any
attempt on the part of aunt Hannah to change her plans. With Hiram too,
aunt Hannah had felt the same repellent influence and she wondered why
it was, though she had prayerfully and conscientiously longed to be to
these people what God wanted her to be, that she did not seem able to
reach their hearts in any way. Now these two girls weighed heavily upon
her. She had watched them for days and had determined to make some move
pretty soon. She felt sure there was need of help for them, and urgent
need, far beyond what Molly had bluntly expressed. And while aunt Hannah
weighed and measured and baked and thought, she was making in her mind a
plan for the salvation of Mamie Williams and Carrie Simmons.
She had noticed Mamie several times lately when Celia came to the table,
and she knew that she watched Celia intently and admired her afar, at
least she admired her in so far as outward adornments were concerned.
Even during the few weeks since aunt Hannah had come to Philadelphia,
she had noticed the gradual change in Mamie’s dress, from gay and fussy
and frivolous, to a style somewhat more subdued and neat. She had
reduced the baggy bunches of frizzy hair that used to project over her
forehead and loop far down over her ears, till they were more like
Celia’s graceful braids with a stray curl slipping out here and there.
She still wore her many colored finger rings, but there were other
little changes about her that showed she was to a certain extent making
Celia a model just now. Aunt Hannah’s brow cleared. She thought she knew
a way to Mamie’s heart and perhaps through hers to Carrie’s. Celia had
an influence and she could help. But how to bring that about in the
wisest way, that was aunt Hannah’s puzzle, for Celia was very much
disgusted with the actions of the two “three-centers” as she called
them. She never noticed them in any way, and her dignified bearing at
the table was always meant to be a rebuke to them. Celia did not like
those two girls, and while she was willing that their lives should be
made more comfortable by their sharing in the good food that aunt Hannah
now provided for Mrs. Morris’ old boarders, still Celia would not have
felt badly to have had them leave that their places might be occupied by
more interesting people.
* * * * *
Celia was getting to be a sort of a puzzle anyway. She did not enter
into some things as her aunt had supposed she would. Instead she held
aloof, and seemed troubled about something. She did not even make
friends with the young minister, in whom aunt Hannah saw growing
possibilities of a valued friendship for them all. He and she had talked
together on themes of mutual interest, and he had shown that he was a
man of culture and education. Aunt Hannah was not a match-maker, and did
not immediately think of every young man in the light of a possible
husband for her dear Celia, but she did have ambitions that Celia might
have friends who would be helpful in every way to her, both spiritually
and mentally, and she felt that such a friendship, though it were
nothing more than occasional converse on some literary theme, would be
excellent for the young girl whose ambitions and abilities were so far
beyond her opportunities. But Celia only smiled, and remained quiet and
distant, and told aunt Hannah that the young minister belonged to her,
and she must not expect her niece to take him on faith. Nevertheless,
she knew that no movement or word of Mr. Stafford’s at the table escaped
Celia. It was evident that she was measuring him.
Celia had not entered very heartily into the plans made for Harry
Knowles. She had done what she was told, it was true, but she had not
made plans herself. She seemed to have received a set-back on the night
when Harry came home drunk. There had been much to do in the evenings,
however, and her aunt had not had time to have a good long talk with
her. She felt that it ought to come at once. She put the pies in the
oven, closed the oven door carefully, and glancing at the clock went to
her own room to kneel as was her custom in perplexity and lay her
trouble all at her Master’s feet. Then she came back to her work about
the house with calm brow and untroubled heart, feeling sure the way
would be opened and words given her, if she must speak. She would have
made a good model for a study of a saint as she stood beside the
moulding board soon after and patted the smooth, light loaves into shape
for their last rising, bending her sweet, thoughtful face to her work,
her mind busy with the problems of souls, while she worked with her
hands to feed their bodies.
It was like a revelation of what God can do in a human soul through
sorrow, to look at Hannah Grant and think of her past life with its
buried and risen joys.
“Methinks we do as fretful children do,
Leaning their faces on the window pane
To sigh the glass dim with their own breath’s stain,
And shut the sky and landscape from their view.
And thus, alas! since God, the Maker, drew
A mystic separation ’twixt those twain,
The life beyond us, and our souls in pain,
We miss the prospect which we’re called unto
By grief we’re fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul’s large window pure from wrong,
That so, as life’s appointment issueth,
Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death.”
“Auntie, who is the youth in the parlor so redolent of Hoyt’s German
cologne and cigarette smoke?” asked Celia, gaily, coming into her aunt’s
room just after dinner that night. “You opened the door for him, you
ought to know. I do hope he is not a new boarder, for I’m morally
certain he wouldn’t be any help, and I think we have enough heathen to
work for at present, don’t you? How don’t tell me you called me up to
ask my permission to take in that oily-looking youth, aunt Hannah.”
Aunt Hannah laughed and then grew grave.
“No, dear, not that,” she said, and then she drew the little rocker
close beside her own and said “Sit down, dear, I want to talk to you.”
“Why, aunt Hannah, what have I been doing that’s naughty?” asked Celia,
pretending to be scared. “This sounds like old times,” but she settled
herself comfortably and nestled her head lovingly on her aunt’s
shoulder.
“Well then, first of all, Celia, why do you act so strangely sometimes,
and what is the matter with Mr. Stafford? You and he ought to be
friends, and he could help much in the work you planned we should do
together. You seem to me to have lost your interest in the house and
everything in it, and I do not understand it. There is much that you
could do and ought to do at once, and you do not seem to care to go
about it.”
“Why, aunt Hannah, what has the minister to do with it all? I am afraid
you are mistaken in him as a helper. In fact I know you are. I had just
come home that night—the night after Harry had been drinking, you
know,—and was passing the door, and I heard Mr. Stafford’s laugh, and
then I heard Harry laugh, too, and I couldn’t help hearing that Mr.
Stafford was telling a funny story to Harry as I went on up the hall.
Now just think of that after what had happened. A pretty minister he is,
I think. He ought to have been preaching a sermon.”
“Celia! Take care how you judge without knowing. You cannot tell what
may have been the pointed moral of the funny story, and you do not know
but the Lord could use a laugh just then to help that young man better
than anything else, and he doubtless put it into the heart of his
servant to know that. I believe that man has rare tact in winning souls.
Be very careful, and be very slow ever to criticise the actions of a
minister. His office brings him nearer to God than most men.”
Celia’s cheeks flushed a little. She was slightly annoyed to have her
aunt speak in that way, but she respected the elder woman’s opinion too
much to resent the words or refuse the lesson. After a moment she said:
“Well, aunt Hannah, maybe I have been wrong, I’ll try to be good.” In
her heart Celia had another reason for her dignified coldness toward the
minister. She had recognized, after a few days, that he was a man of
unusual education and refinement. She immediately began to wonder
whether or not he looked down upon her, a saleswoman in a store, a poor
girl, who had to earn her own living. She settled it in her mind that he
probably did in a certain undefined way, though he probably did not
confess such things to himself as that might have conflicted with
certain Christian theories he felt himself bound to abide by. She told
herself that he should see that she never expected anything in the way
of courtesy even from him, and that she was one girl in the world, who
was not ready to fling herself forward for companionship with any
desirable young man that should chance to be thrown in her neighborhood.
She had been still further strengthened in her determination by a little
occurrence one evening a few days before this talk with her aunt.
The minister had gone to prayer meeting, having been busily engaged in
his room all day, so that aunt Hannah had not been able to finish
certain dusting and setting to rights there as thoroughly as she
desired. The evening had found her hands full of some kitchen work, and
she had requested Celia to slip up there when the halls were quiet,
while the occupant of the room was in meeting and finish the dusting.
Celia had been glad to help. She had turned the gas up and gone to work
in earnest, glancing interestedly at the rows of books over the little
table against the wall, and wishing she had opportunity to look them
over, but she would not put so much as a hand upon them except to do her
necessary work, in the absence of their owner. When she came to the
bureau she had to move some things to wipe the dust off beneath them. A
Bible was lying there open before a painted miniature of a most lovely
young woman. The pictured face was so beautiful that she could not but
look at it again as she carefully wiped the dust from the velvet and
gold of its case. The blue eyes and golden hair and the sweet
intellectual face stayed in her memory, and from the fact that the
miniature stood open before his Bible, she judged it was of some one
quite near and dear. Celia did not reason it out in words, but she
thought it well that she should maintain a maidenly dignity. However, as
her aunt talked, she saw that she had carried this feeling to an absurd
extremity. What was it to her what the young man thought, or how many
velvet-framed girls he carried in his pocket next his heart? She was in
the same house with him and must treat him with Christian courtesy, and
she need not necessarily make herself prominent before his eyes either.
She would try to do differently. He should henceforth be as one of the
other boarders to her.
“What else, auntie?” she asked, after a minute of thought, looking up.
“Harry, next,” said her aunt. “You ought to interest him in something
occasionally, as you once told me you did in a lamp. He is having a very
hard struggle to keep away from those companions who are after him every
day now, Mr. Stafford says. He does all he can for him, but you know his
meetings occupy so many evenings that he can do very little and he
hasn’t thought it wise to try to take him to church yet. You know he’s
nothing but a boy. He wants to be interested in something.”
“Yes,” said Celia, “I know. I’ll try. But, auntie, I can’t forget how he
looked that night,” and she shuddered. “But I’ll try to get up something
to help and that right away. Now what else? You always save the worst
dose till the last, I know you of old. Which is it? Miss Burns or the
tenor brakeman? Or—O _auntie_, now it _isn’t_ those three-centers!
Don’t tell me to try to do something for them, for I can’t,” and the
girl put up her hands in mock horror.
Miss Grant detailed to her what she knew of them, including an account
of Molly’s moralizing on the subject, and Celia laughed, and then grew
grave.
There came a call to the kitchen for Miss Grant then and she left Celia
thinking. When she returned a few minutes later she was greeted with
“Aunt Hannah, are those boards still in the cellar? Are they of any use
there? Because if they are not I’m going to make a cozy corner in the
parlor if you don’t object. I’ve thought of a beautiful way. Harry will
help, I’m sure. He sat in the parlor looking glum when I came up. Do you
suppose I must get the three-centers to help? Would they come, do you
think? And say, by the way, auntie, who did you say that oily youth in
the parlor was?”
“His name, he said, was Mr. Clarence Jones and he asked for Miss
Simmons. I called her and I think she went out with him, for I don’t see
either of them about. I don’t know whether Mamie Williams is in her room
or not. I think it would be a good plan to see. By all means make as
many cozy corners as you please, dear, and the boards are of no use to
me.”
Celia departed to find her helpers, and Miss Hannah locked the door and
prayed for them before she went about darning some tablecloths.