A "LEADING."
"The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand
And share its dewdrop with another near."
MRS. BROWNING.
Glory McWhirk was waiting upstairs, in Faith's pretty, white,
dimity-hung chamber.
These two girls, of such utterly different birth and training, were
drawing daily toward each other across the gulf of social circumstance
that separated them.
Twice a week, now, Glory came over, and found her seat and her books
ready in Miss Faith's pleasant room, and Faith herself waiting to impart
to her, or to put her in the way of gathering, those bits of week-day
knowledge she had ignorantly hungered for so long.
Glory made quick progress. A good, plain foundation had been laid during
the earlier period of her stay with Miss Henderson, by a regular
attendance, half daily, at the district school. Aunt Faith said
"nobody's time belonged to anybody that knew better themselves, until
they could read, and write, and figure, and tell which side of the globe
they lived on." Then, too, the girl's indiscriminate gleaning from such
books as had come in her way, through all these years, assorted itself
gradually, now, about new facts.
Glory's "good times" had, verily, begun at last.
On this day that she sat waiting, Faith had been called down by her
mother to receive some village ladies who had walked over to Cross
Corners to pay a visit. Glory had time for two or three chapters of
"Ivanhoe," and to tell Hendie, who strayed in, and begged for it,
Bridget Foye's old story of the little red hen, while the regular course
of topics was gone through below, of the weather--the new minister--the
last meeting of the Dorcas Society--the everlasting wants and
helplessness of Mrs. Sheffley and her seven children, and whether the
society had better do anything more for them--the trouble in the west
district school, and the question "where the Dorcas bag was to go next
time."
At last, the voices and footsteps retreated, through the entry, the door
closed somewhat promptly as the last "good afternoon" was said, and
Faith sprang up the narrow staircase.
There was a lesson in Geography, and a bit of natural Philosophy to be
done first, and then followed their Bible talk; for this was Saturday.
Before Glory went it had come to be Faith's practice always to read to
her some bit of poetry--a gem from Tennyson or Mrs. Browning, or a stray
poem from a magazine or paper which she had laid by as worthy.
"Glory," said she, to-day, "I'm going to let you share a little treasure
of mine--something Mr. Armstrong gave me."
Glory's eyes deepened and glowed.
"It is thoughts," said Faith. "Thoughts in verse. I shall read it to
you, because I think it will just answer you, as it did me. Don't you
feel, sometimes, like a little brook in a deep wood?"
Glory's gaze never moved from Faith's face. Her poetical instinct seized
the image, and the thought of her life applied it.
"All alone, and singing to myself? Yes, I _did_, Miss Faith. But I think
it is growing lighter and pleasanter every day. I think I am
getting----"
"Stop! stop!" said Faith. "Don't steal the verses before I read them!
You're such a queer child, Glory! One never can tell you anything."
And then Faith gave her pearls; because she knew they would not be
trampled under foot, but taken into a heart and held there; and because
just such a rapt and reverent ecstasy as her own had been when the
minister had given her, in fulfillment of his promise, this thought of
his for the comfort that was in it, looked out from the face that was
uplifted to hers.
"'Up in the wild, where no one comes to look,
There lives and sings, a little lonely brook;
Liveth and singeth in the dreary pines,
Yet creepeth on to where the daylight shines.
"'Pure from their heaven, in mountain chalice caught,
It drinks the rains, as drinks the soul her thought;
And down dim hollows, where it winds along,
Bears its life-burden of unlistened song.
"'I catch the murmur of its undertone
That sigheth, ceaselessly,--alone! alone!
And hear, afar, the Rivers gloriously
Shout on their paths toward the shining sea!
"'The voiceful Rivers, chanting to the sun;
And wearing names of honor, every one;
Outreaching wide, and joining hand with hand
To pour great gifts along the asking land.
"'Ah, lonely brook! creep onward through the pines!
Press through the gloom, to where the daylight shines!
Sing on among the stones, and secretly
Feel how the floods are all akin to thee!
"'Drink the sweet rain the gentle heaven sendeth;
Hold thine own path, howeverward it tendeth;
For, somewhere, underneath the eternal sky,
Thou, too, shalt find the Rivers, by-and-by!'"
Faith's voice trembled with earnestness as she finished. When she looked
up from the paper as she refolded it, tears were running down Glory's
cheeks.
"Why, the little brook has overflowed!" cried Faith, playfully. If she
had not found this to say, she would have cried, herself.
"Miss Faith!" said Glory, "I ain't sure whether I was meant to tell; but
do you know what the minister has asked Miss Henderson? Perhaps she
won't; I'm afraid not; it would be _too_ good a time! but he wants her
to let him come and board with her! Just think what it would be for him
to be in the house with us all the time! Why, Miss Faith, it would be
just as if one of those great Rivers had come rolling along through the
dark woods, right among the little lonely brooks!"
Faith made no answer. She was astonished. Miss Henderson had said
nothing of it. She never did make known her subjects of deliberation
till the deliberations had become conclusions.
"Why, you don't seem glad!"
"I _am_ glad," said Faith, slowly and quietly. She was strangely
conscious at the moment that she said so, glad as she would be if Mr.
Armstrong were really to come so near, and she might see him daily, of a
half jealousy that Glory should be nearer still.
It was quite true that Mr. Armstrong had this wish. Hitherto, he had
been at the house of the elder minister, Mr. Holland. A unanimous
invitation had been given to Mr. Armstrong by the people to remain among
them as their settled pastor. This he had not yet consented to do. But
he had entered upon another engagement of six months, to preach for
them. Now he needed a permanent home, which he could not conveniently
have at Mr. Holland's.
There was great putting of heads together at the "Dorcas," about it.
Mrs. Gimp "would offer; but then--there was Serena, and folks would
talk."
Other families had similar holdbacks--that is the word, for they were
not absolute insuperabilities--wary mothers were waiting until it should
appear positively necessary that _somebody_ should waive objection, and
take the homeless pastor in; and each watched keenly for the critical
moment when it should be just late enough, and not too late, for her to
yield.
Meanwhile, Mr. Armstrong quietly left all this seething, and walked off
out of the village, one day, to Cross Corners, and asked Miss Henderson
if he might have one of her quaint, pleasant, old-fashioned rooms.
Miss Henderson was deliberating.
This very afternoon, she sat in the southwest tea parlor, with her
knitting forgotten in her lap, and her eyes searching the bright western
sky, as if for a gleam that should light her to decision.
"It ain't that I mind the trouble. And it ain't that there isn't house
room. And it ain't that I don't like the minister," soliloquized she.
"It's whether it would be respectable common sense. I ain't going to
take the field with the Gimps and the Leatherbees, nor to have them
think it, either. She's over here almost every blessed day of her life.
I might as well try to keep the sunshine out of the old house, as to
keep her; and I should be about as likely to want to do one as the
other. But just let me take in Mr. Armstrong, and there'd be all the
eyes in the village watching. There couldn't so much as a cat walk in or
out, but they'd know it, somehow. And they'd be sure to say she was
running after the minister."
Miss Henderson's pronouns were not precise in their reference. It isn't
necessary for soliloquy to be exact. She understood herself, and that
sufficed.
"It would be a disgrace to the parish, anyhow," she resumed, "to let
those Gimps and Leatherbees get him into their net; and they'll do it if
Providence or somebody don't interpose. I wish I was sure whether it was
a leading or not!"
By and by she reverted, at last, as she always did, to that question of
its being a "leading," or not; and, taking down the old Bible from the
corner shelf, she laid it with solemnity on the little light stand at
her side, and opened it, as she had known her father do, in the
important crises of his life, for an "indication."
The wooden saddle and the gun were not all that had come down to Aunt
Faith from the primitive days of the Puritan settlers.
The leaves parted at the story of the Good Samaritan. Bible leaves are
apt to part, as the heart opens, in accordance with long habit and holy
use.
That evening, while Glory was washing up the tea things, Aunt Faith put
on cloak and hood, and walked over to Cross Corners.
"No--I won't take off my things," she replied to Mrs. Gartney's advance
of assistance. "I've just come over to tell you what I'm going to do.
I've made up my mind to take the minister to board. And when the washing
and ironing's out of the way, next week, I shall fix up a room for him,
and he'll come."
"That's a capital plan, Aunt Faith!" said her nephew, with a tone of
pleased animation. "Cross Corners will be under obligation to you. Mr.
Armstrong is a man whom I greatly respect and admire."
"So do I," said Miss Henderson. "And if I didn't, when a man is beset
with thieves all the way from Jerusalem to Jericho, it's time for some
kind of a Samaritan to come along."
Next day, Mis' Battis heard the news, and had her word of comment to
offer.
"She's got room enough for him, if that's all; but I wouldn't a believed
she'd have let herself be put about and upset so, if it was for John the
Baptist! I always thought she was setter'n an old hen! But then, she's
gittin' into years, and it's kinder handy, I s'pose, havin' a minister
round the house, sayin' she should be took anyways sudden!"
Village comments it would be needless to attempt to chronicle.
April days began to wear their tearful beauty, and the southwest room at
the old house was given up to Mr. Armstrong.