Returning to the table, Mr. Middleton announced with troubled face that
Miss Stewart, the librarian, was ill, and he must find some one before
three o'clock to take her place. He glanced at Elsie hesitatingly.
"I suppose you are tired, Elsie, dear?"
"Oh, no," she returned and added, almost unconsciously, "Uncle John."
"Then I wonder if I can't work you in at the library for a day or so?
It isn't at all taxing, indeed, it's really very pleasant. It's open
every day from three to six, and except on Saturday, when there's apt
to be a crowd, people drop in in a leisurely way. I could go over with
you and get you started and stay until nearly four, when I have a
committee meeting. Would you be willing to try, dear?"
"Oh, I'd like it ever so much," she returned, really captivated by the
idea. He looked relieved and smiled gratefully.
"There, Jack, it's just as I told you it would be," exclaimed Mrs.
Middleton, patting a pink satin bow complacently. "I said to your
uncle, Elsie love, that a girl of sixteen is almost a woman--I was only
seventeen when I was married--and that he could make an assistant of
you right away."
Her smile faded and her hand went to her heart in an affected way.
"My being such a sad invalid is a terrible drag on your uncle, though
he won't confess it," she added feebly. "I often and often drop a
secret tear over it, I own; but now that there'll be some one to help
with the little services that would naturally fall to a pastor's wife,
I shall be quite content. You know how the poet says that others shall
sing the song and right the wrong? 'What matter I or they?' That is
how it seems to me."
Mr. Middleton gazed at his wife tenderly, but Elsie's youthful scorn
increased. She was not sufficiently mature to understand that it shows
something of character to look on kindly while another younger, fairer
person steps in to fulfil duties that should have been one's own, even
though one may have repudiated them.
Directly lunch was over, Elsie ran up-stairs--something she seldom had
done--unfastened her trunk, took out an embroidered white linen suit
and dressed quickly. She could scarcely wait until time to go to the
library. She was ready to lose the train to-day, and even to-morrow if
need be.
At the library, she found the procedure simple and easily acquired. It
was fascinating, also, as was the great airy room; and she wandered
about through the stacks, and gazed at the books, magazines, pictures,
maps and bulletin-board in a sort of dream. It was a warm day and no
one came in during the first half-hour.
Mr. Middleton had scarcely left, however, when a little girl in a
scant, faded frock that was clean, however, and freshly starched, came
shyly in with a book--a child of nine or ten with an anxious expression
on her old, refined little face which hadn't yet lost all its baby
curves.
"Why, where's Miss Rachel?" she asked, the look of anxiety fading and a
shy little smile appearing in its stead.
Elsie explained.
"Well, I think you're ever 'n' ever so much nicer, and so pretty!" said
the child. Then her face clouded again as she opened the book that she
held in thin little hands that were like claws.
"The baby did it," she said sorrowfully as she exhibited a picture torn
across. "He isn't a year old yet and don't understand. He isn't the
least naughty, only _mischeevious_, you know. Ma says I ought not to
have been reading it while I was minding him, but you see I'm _always_
minding him except when he's asleep--and then he wakes right up,
mostly."
She sighed. "Do you s'pose you can mend it?" she inquired.
"Yes, indeed," returned Elsie promptly, and smiled involuntarily.
The child fingered her frock. "Miss Rachel would scold," she faltered,
Elsie didn't know what to say. Neither did she understand why tears
should come to her eyes, except that the little girl was so small, so
thin, so clean and sweet, and so very childish in spite of her
responsibility.
She found some gummed paper, cut a strip, brought the torn edges
carefully together and mended the picture as neatly as if she had not
been a week ago as helpless an able-bodied girl of her age as there was
anywhere to be found. Her sense of satisfaction was certainly
commensurate, perhaps extravagant.
"There! Miss Stewart will never know," she said. "Do you want another
book now?"
"Yes, please; but--is it right for Miss Rachel not to know?"
Elsie considered. "Perhaps not," she admitted, "but at any rate she
won't mind since it looks as well as before."
"And I'll be very careful after this," added the child.
She selected another volume from the children's shelf, and having had
it charged, turned to go. But somehow Elsie was loath to have her.
"Why don't you sit down at the table and look at the picture papers?"
she suggested.
"Oh, I've got to mind the baby," said Mattie--Mattie Howe was the name
on her card. "I must be home when he wakes up. Good-by."
She started--came back--stood irresolute.
"Thank you for mending the book so good--so _goodly_," she said shyly,
"and--I'd like to kiss you."
With a curious sensation that had no admixture of reluctance, Elsie
bent over and received the kiss.
"You're prettier than the princess," the little girl declared, and ran
away with her book.
Elsie Marley hardly knew what would have happened if an elderly lady
hadn't come in at that moment and asked for "Cruden's Concordance."
She had some difficulty in finding it, but the lady was very pleasant
and grateful, and after that there was a constant succession of
visitors. Many children came in, all attractive, to Elsie's surprise,
though none so appealing as Mattie Howe; and older people in surprising
numbers, considering Mr. Middleton's prophecy.
But word had somehow gone round that the minister's niece was "tending
library," and things being rather dull in the midsummer pause of most
of the activities of the place, no doubt more than one came out of
curiosity.
It was a very friendly curiosity, however, expressed in the pleasantest
manner, and Elsie found herself responding to their advances without
knowing how. She wondered at herself. The girl did not realize that
being in the library made a difference. It was her first experience of
work, or of doing anything whatever for any one else, so that even the
service of getting out books for another established a sort of
relationship between them. At the close of the afternoon, though
tired, she was strangely happy.
But she couldn't understand it--didn't know herself. She found herself
wondering who the stranger was who had worn her frock and occupied the
chair of the librarian that afternoon. Grandmother Pritchard wouldn't
have recognized her, nor Aunt Ellen. Had she, in assuming another
name, changed her nature also?