A PLAN AND A TALK.
Marty so enjoyed being back at the farm, and there was so much to see
and to do, that for four or five days she could think of nothing else.
She and Evaline raced all over the place, climbing trees and fences,
playing in the barn or down in the wood, paddling in the little brook,
riding on the hay-wagon, and going with the boy to bring home the cows.
In short, the delights of farm life for the time being drove everything
else out of Marty's head, and it was not until Sunday morning that she
gave a thought to missions. Perhaps she would not have remembered even
then had not her mother said,
"Marty, here are your ten pennies. I forgot to give them to you
yesterday."
"There!" thought Marty. "In spite of what Miss Agnes said the very last
thing, I've forgotten all about missions. I've never told Evaline a
breath about them, and I haven't prayed or done anything."
She got out her box and put in it her tenth, and four pennies for a
thank-offering for the happy time she had been having. She also got the
list of subjects Miss Walsh had furnished her with, and some of her
books; but there was no time to read then, for her mother had said she
might go to church with Mr. and Mrs. Stokes, and she must get ready.
Evaline was not at home, her uncle having called the previous evening
and taken her to spend a couple of days at his house.
There was preaching that Sunday in the schoolhouse at Black's Mills, a
village between four and five miles distant in the opposite direction
from Riseborough. It was quite a novelty to Marty to go so far to
church, but it was a lovely drive and she enjoyed it extremely. It
certainly seemed strange to attend service in the battered little frame
schoolhouse, without any organ or choir, and to eat crackers and cheese
in the wagon on the way home, as Mrs Stokes was afraid she would be
hungry before their unusually late dinner. But Marty was so charmed with
country life and all belonging to it that she considered the whole thing
an improvement upon city churchgoing.
In the afternoon she took her Bible and some missionary leaflets, and
going into a retired place in the garden read and studied for more than
an hour. The missionary spirit within her was fully awake that day. She
longed to talk with Evaline and could hardly wait until it was time for
her to come home. But by Tuesday, when she did come, Marty's head was
full of other matters, such as a discovery she had made in the wood of a
hollow in an old tree which would be a lovely playhouse, and an
expedition to Sunset Hill that was being talked of. So in one way or
another nearly two weeks of vacation had passed before this Missionary
Twig, who had been so ardent to begin with, had redeemed her promise of
trying to interest somebody in the work.
But in the meantime she had thought of Jimmy Torrence. The way he was
brought to her mind was this. She was with her mother on the side porch,
Monday morning, when Mrs. Stokes, coming out of the kitchen with floury
hands, inquired,
"Mrs. Ashford, did you see the little boy in the carriage that just
passed 'long?"
"Yes," replied Mrs. Ashford.
"Well, you just ought to have seen him when they brought him up here
three weeks ago--his folks are boarding over at Capt. Smith's; such a
pale, peaked child _I_ never saw! Had been awful sick, they said, and
now you see he looks right down well."
"Why, yes, he does," said Mrs. Ashford. "I should never imagine he had
been ill very recently. The country has certainly done him good."
"That's just it!" said Mrs. Stokes. "There's nothing like taking
children to the country a spell after they've been sick. Makes 'em fat
and rosy in less than no time."
"Oh! mamma," exclaimed Marty. "That makes me think of poor little Jimmy.
I wish we could do something to get him sent to the country."
"I wish we could, but I don't see any way to do it. I have given all I
can afford this summer to the different Fresh-Air Funds."
"Can't you think of anything, clothes or such things, that you were
going to get me, and that I _could_ do without, and send the money to
Mrs. Watson?" pleaded Marty.
"I can't think of anything just this minute," answered her mother with a
gentle smile, "but if you will bring Freddie in out of the hot sun, and
get something to amuse him near here, I'll try to think."
"Oh! do, please. And mind, mamma, it must be something for me to do
without--not you."
Marty ran down the yard to where Freddie, with red face and without his
hat, was rushing up and down playing he was a "little engine."
"Freddie," she called, "don't you want to come and make mud pies?"
This was a favorite amusement of the small boy, and instantly the little
engine subsided into a baker. Marty led him up near the porch, where
there was a nice bed of mould--"clean dirt," Mrs. Stokes called it--and
they were soon hard at work on the pies.
Marty enjoyed this play as much as Freddie, and it was some time before
she thought of asking,
"Mamma, have you thought of anything yet?"
Mrs. Ashford smiled and nodded.
"What is it?" exclaimed Marty, bounding up on the porch.
"I don't know whether you will like the plan or not, but it is the only
thing that occurs to me. Your school coat will be too short for you next
winter, and I was going to get you a new one. But the old one could be
altered so that you might wear it. I have some of the material, and
could piece the skirt and sleeves and trim it with braid. As it always
was a little too large for you about the shoulders, it would fit next
winter well enough that way. Doing that would save about five dollars as
near as I can calculate."
"Then we should have five dollars for Jimmy?"
"Yes."
"But would it be much trouble to you to alter the coat?"
"It would be some trouble, but I am willing to take that for my share."
"Oh! then let's do it," cried Marty.
"Wait, wait," said her mother. "You must think it over first. You know
when you do things in a hurry, sometimes you regret them afterwards."
"I know I sha'n't regret this," Marty protested; "but I'll go and think
a while."
She went and sat down on her last batch of pies, resting her head on her
knees, with her eyes shut. In a very short space of time she was back at
her mother's side.
"Oh! you have not thought long enough," said Mrs. Ashford. "I meant for
a day or two."
"There's no use thinking any longer, for I know I'll think just the
same. I've thought all about how the coat will look when it's pieced,
and how all the girls will know it's pieced, and how I'd a great deal
rather have one that isn't pieced. Then I thought how pale and sick
Jimmy looks, and how much he wants to go to the country, and how much
good it would do him to go, and how he has no nice times as I have, and,
I declare, I'd rather wear pieced coats all the rest of my life than not
have him go." She winked her eyes very hard to keep back the tears.
"Very well," said Mrs. Ashford, stroking the little girl's flushed
cheek, "we will consider it settled. I will write to Mrs. Watson this
afternoon, inclosing the money, and telling her about Jimmy."
By Saturday a reply came from Mrs. Watson saying that arrangements had
been made to send Jimmy to a kind woman in the country, who would take
good care of him, and it was probable the money Marty had sent would pay
his board there for nearly three weeks. She also said that Jimmy had
been very poorly again. Dr. Fisher, finding him in Mrs. Scott's room one
day when he called, had seen how miserable the boy was, and had given
him medicine, and had said, when he heard he was going to be sent to the
country, that it would be just the thing, better than any amount of
medicine. The letter also stated that Mrs. Fisher had fitted Jimmy out
in some of her little boy's clothes. So he would be very comfortable.
"Could anything be nicer!" exclaimed Marty. "I'm so glad of it all!"
The same mail that brought Mrs. Watson's letter brought Marty's little
missionary magazine, which she always wanted to sit right down and
read.
"Now," said her mother, after they had got through talking over the
letter, "I wish you would mind Freddie while I write some letters."
Marty took her magazine into the back yard where Freddie was playing
with his wheelbarrow under the lilac-bushes. She sat down by the big
pear-tree to read, though not forgetting to keep an eye on her little
brother's proceedings. Missions seemed as interesting as ever as she
read. Presently she saw Evaline coming out of the kitchen with a pail of
water and brush to scrub the back steps.
"Evaline," she called, "when you get through your work come down here
where I'm minding Freddie, wont you? I want to tell you something."
"Yes," replied Evaline, "I'll come pretty soon. This is the last thing
I've got to do."
She soon came and threw herself on the grass beside Marty, who forthwith
began showing her the magazine and telling her in a rather incoherent
way about mission work in general and their band in particular. She told
how many belonged to the band, what they did at the meetings, how much
money they had, and what they were going to do with it; how this band
was only one of hundreds of bands that were all connected with a big
society; and how the object of the whole thing was to teach the heathen
in foreign lands about God and try to make Christians of them.
"That must be the same thing that Ruth Campbell was talking so much
about a while ago," said Evaline when Marty stopped, more to take breath
than because she had nothing further to say.
"Who's Ruth Campbell? and what was she saying?"
"Why, the Campbells live in that house that you can just see the top of
from our barn. Ruth's as old as our Almiry, but she knows a heap more,
for she went to school in Johnsburgh. She taught our school last winter,
and is going to again next. She told us about something they have in
Johnsburgh, and it sounds very much like yours, so it must be a
mission-band. She said she wished we could have one here, but none of us
paid much attention to it."
"Oh, I think you would like it ever so much," said Marty; "only maybe
there wouldn't be enough children round here to make a band," she added
doubtfully.
"How many does it take?" asked Evaline.
"Oh, bands are of different sizes. I s'pose you _could_ make one of four
or five."
"There's a sight more children than that on the mountain," said Evaline
with some contempt. "But then some of 'em mightn't want to send their
money away to the heathen; and anyhow, I don't know where they'd get any
money to send. Folks up here, 'specially children, don't have much."
"Why, I thought the country was just the place to make money for
missions," cried Marty. "There's 'first-fruits' and such things that are
a great deal easier got at in the country than in town. And I have heard
of children raising missionary corn and potatoes, and having missionary
hens that laid the very best kind of eggs regularly every day, that
brought a high price."
"Yes, but who's going to buy the things up here? Folks all have their
own corn and potatoes and hens. And how'd we children get a few little
things miles and miles to market?"
Marty was rather taken aback by this view of the subject. "The children
I read about got _somebody_ to buy their things," she said.
She was rather discouraged because Evaline was not more enthusiastic
about missions, and thought there was no use trying to further the cause
in this region; but fortunately she happened to tell Almira what they
had been talking of, and she took up the subject as warmly as Marty
could wish, saying she thought it would be very nice to have a
missionary circle of some sort.
"Ruth has talked to me about it," she said, "and I promised to help,
but we can't seem to get the children interested."
"Aren't there _any_ interested, not even enough to begin with?" inquired
Marty.
"Well, there are Ruth's two brothers and sister, and I think Joe and
Maria Pratt, who live just beyond Campbell's, might be talked into it.
Then there's Eva, but she doesn't seem to care much about it."
"I care a great deal more since I heard Marty tell about her band,"
Evaline declared, "and I wouldn't mind belonging to something of the
kind, only I don't see where I'd get any money to give."
"We'd try to manage that," said Almira.
After that for a few days there was a good deal of talk among them all
on the subject, and some reading aloud afternoons from Marty's
missionary books. Finally Mrs. Stokes said she thought it would be a
very good thing for the young people in the neighborhood to have a
society, and proposed that Almira and the little girls should go over
and spend the next afternoon with Ruth, when they could talk the matter
over.