SOME USE FOR MOLL.
Flat on your face, and a raging bull coming after you! That is a
terrible position! It is never wise to run races with a bull, or a
horse, or a greyhound, or anything else that has four legs--except,
perhaps, a very fat prize pig, or the kitchen table. What can you,
with two legs, do against four legs?
Besides, poor Bryda felt that there was no one to help her; there was
only Moll Dawson near, of whom she was nearly as much afraid as she
was of the bull; and poor little helpless Beppo, whose eyes grew,
like those of the dog in the fairy tale, as big as saucers with
terror, as he stood, panting but safe, on the right side of the gate.
Stay! there was one Friend, to whom Bryda had long ago learned at her
mother's knee to look for help. She had, indeed, never been in any
such danger before, but mother had, and many a time she had told
Bryda of the time of peril when the ship was said to be about to go
down on the broad Atlantic, and no help was near--no human help, at
least. And the chaplain gathered together all who could or would
come, and cried to Him Who holds the seas in the hollow of His hand.
"In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for
succor, but of Thee, O Lord? ... Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of
our hearts; shut not Thy merciful ears unto our prayer; but spare us,
Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour!"
So the chaplain prayed, and the sea went down, as once did the waves
of Galilee when the Lord of winds and waves willed it, and mother and
all the shipload were saved. And so Bryda cried to the loving
Saviour as she fell, and to her, too, came help in the way she least
expected. For as the bull with angry red eyes and dreadful sharp
horns had nearly reached her, when all hope seemed gone, and she had
not strength to try and rise, a shawl deftly thrown fell right over
the furious animal's head, making him stop and then turn round,
bellowing frantically, as if he meant to ask who dared to interfere
in this way with his great will and pleasure, which was to toss an
insignificant child. There were plenty of children in the world,
pray why should he not toss one if he so pleased? he seemed to ask.
While his majesty was expressing something of this sort very noisily,
a strong hand rather roughly seized the fallen Bryda, picked her up,
and dragged her over or through--she never knew which--the great,
strong, five-barred gate, where Beppo stood already, and watched,
white with terror, having had time to take breath.
Bryda was not white, she was red-hot and breathless, and it was
several seconds before she could collect her scattered wits enough to
see the bull tearing the shawl to pieces, with a strong wall and gate
between himself and her, and also to see that her preserver was no
other than that great object of her terror, Moll Dawson.
"Now then," said Moll roughly, as she tried to pinch Bryda's hat into
shape again. "You're a foolish one, you are. Why didn't you stop
when you heard me screechin'?"
"Because--I--because--" stammered Bryda, who felt she could not tell
Moll that the "screechin'" had made her run as fast as possible in
the other direction from that Moll intended.
The girl burst into a loud laugh. "You're a softy, upon my word! So
you thought I'd eat yer blackberries and yer blessed selves arter
them! But it was out of the fryin'-pan into the fire this time, and
no mistake. Oh, I see ye blushing! Tell Moll Dawson no stories;
she's too 'cute for the likes o' you."
"I don't want to tell stories," said poor Bryda, with tears in her
eyes. "Indeed, indeed I am grateful. That bull would have torn me
to pieces, as he is tearing your shawl."
And Bryda turned quite sick at the sight of the great brute stamping
on fragments of the shawl, then, tearing them afresh with his horns,
bellowing all the time as if it was quite an amusement to destroy
something.
"I shall ask grannie to give me a new shawl for you, Moll," said
Bryda.
"Don't trouble your head, child; it's only a old rag, bless you. So
soon as I can earn a bit o' money I'll have a jacket wi' beads all
over, like a young lady. Not as that they'll take me for a lady--not
even the boys at the factory. Give me that pretty blue silk
handkerchief on your neck," went on Moll, with a sudden change of
tone. This was a command rather than a request, to judge by the tone
in which it was spoken; but Bryda hesitated--mother had given it to
her just before she went away.
The girl, seeing she hesitated, laughed again loud and bitterly--a
laugh without merriment.
"Oh! keep your things to yourself! I want none of them! Silk
handkerchiefs are not for the likes of me, nor nothin' else that's
good--only sharp words and crooked looks." Here Moll threw herself
down on the nearest bank, and tore some white queen-daisies to bits.
"Here, take it, Moll!" said Bryda, as she snatched off her
handkerchief. "I am sure you are welcome to it, and anything else I
have;" and with a gentle coaxing way she tied the scarf round Moll
Dawson's neck. The rough girl looked more gracious; she bent her
neck to try and catch a glimpse of this bit of finery, then looked up
at Bryda again.
[Illustration: (Bryda giving Moll her handkerchief)]
"You've got a gran, too! I've seen her. Does she beat you very
often?" was her next remark.
Bryda and Beppo both stared open-mouthed at this question.
Grandmother would as soon think of----
"Never!" said Bryda at last, very decidedly.
"I suppose she's kind, then?"
Bryda nodded expressively,
"Well, my gran ain't," pursued poor Moll. "Beats us with the poker,
for all she pretended to be so ill and weak when you brought soup o'
Sunday, missy. We're a bad lot, we are, all but father; he'd be good
if he could, I know."
"Oh, Moll!" said Bryda, answering the girl's miserable tone as much
as her words, "why don't you try and be good?"
"I suppose you're good?" said the girl; "it is not hard for such as
you to keep straight."
"Indeed, I am not good," cried truthful Bryda, remembering a great
many faults at once. "I'm so often in mischief or some trouble that
Uncle Jack says I live in a jar of mixed pickles. But I do want to
be good for all that."
"So you will some day, when you're a fine lady. And, I warrant,
you're not real bad now. And you'd not be frightened of me any
more?" added Moll sadly, looking up at her.
"No, indeed; we'd be fond of you--wouldn't we, Beppo?" said Bryda
eagerly.
Beppo nodded and said, "Yes, yes." He was proud of his knowledge of
English, such as it was.
"No one's fond of me," said Moll, still more sadly. "Jim used to be
in a fashion, but he wouldn't give his little finger to save me from
drowning. An' I'm too wicked for father to love me--or any one else
either."
Bryda's eyes filled with tears. "God loves you, Moll," she whispered
gently.
But Moll shook her head. "No, He don't. God Almighty may care for
the gentlefolks--seems like it. But He don't care for such as us."
"Indeed, He does," said Bryda earnestly, quite sure this time that
there was no doubt of what she said being true. "See how he has
cared for Beppo and his mother!"
"Did He tell the old carpenter to be good to them?" asked Moll
thoughtfully. "Well, it's not much a poor man like him can do."
"Oh! he's not a poor man," burst out Bryda. "He's a prince really;
he told me so. And his Father's a very great King, and will take him
to live in a palace some day soon."
"And he have gold, much gold, hid safe from de tieves," added Beppo
in his broken English. He and Bryda were sitting on the bank now
beside Moll Dawson.
"Eh!" said Moll; "whoever would have thought it."
"It's quite true," said Bryda, and went on to tell all about Roger's
inheritance. She was just going on to tell all about his cat, and
the funny story of all the cats with excellent "characters," when
Uncle Jack's voice was heard in the blackberry field calling her.
At this sound Moll Dawson sprang up, nodded a hasty farewell, and
scrambled through a small breach in the hedge behind, vanishing in a
moment, in spite of Bryda's entreaties to her to stay, and let Uncle
Jack hear how she had saved them.
Uncle Jack's cheerful brown face grew very white when he heard the
story.
"Say nothing to the grannies, Bryda," he said. "Not because it is
right to have secrets, little maid; but because grandmother is too
old and weak to hear about anything that would frighten her. But you
and I will see what we can do for Moll Dawson, and we will ask Cousin
Salome's advice, eh?"
Poor Moll Dawson! She had done one good deed that day. It was a
pity that in the afternoon she should do, though not intentionally,
some sad harm.
Her brother Jim worked as garden-boy with Mr. Seymour (that was the
name of Bryda's grandfather). Moll, roaming idly about, met him as
he came from work in the evening, and in her careless, gossiping way
began to tell him all that Bryda had said about old Roger's store of
treasure, which Moll said was money he had hidden away somewhere in
his poor little cottage, like a miser.
For Bryda did not yet understand, what is perhaps plain to any one
reading this, that the old man, accustomed as he was to live alone,
thought so much of the heavenly country where he hoped to go, and of
the many mansions in the Father's house, that he talked of them in a
way that seemed to the child to mean things on earth. So the
precious treasure of the love of Christ, and of the hope that is in
Him, seemed to little Bryda to be perishing treasures of earth--money
and jewels. And what Bryda had told Moll, Moll repeated, with
improvements of her own, to her bad brother.
"Ah! ah!" said Jim; "he's a chicken worth plucking--eh, Moll? A
knock on the old boy's head, if he objects, and then share and share
alike for you and me."
"You leave him alone, Jim," she answered; for the longing to be
better was working in the poor girl's darkened mind, even as the
spirit of God rested on the earth when it was "without form and
void." Christ, who died for poor Moll, was calling gently, and the
hard heart softened a little.
"Boo," said Jim, with a hideous grimace "You're afraid o' being found
out. Split on me and tell the police, will you? Yah, that's like a
woman."
"I'll not have it, Jim," went on Moll steadily. "I'm not afraid,
that you know right well: I'm a better thief than you by a long way,
and never was caught yet; but I'll have naught to do with this--nor
you either."
"We'll see," said Jim, and held his tongue.