"DEAR ALSON: I am inviting, for Aunt Sue, a number of my friends to meet
Miss Mary Sutton, my guest from Amosville. We are to have a garden picnic
Thursday evening. I think you will enjoy meeting Miss Sutton, as she has
the same love for golf you have, and I have already told her of the scores
you made last summer. Yours sincerely,
"HELEN FAIRMONT."
He read it with pleasure. Then the accumulated unkindnesses of his old
friends came before him. A spirit of resentment took hold of him. No, they
had shown how little they cared for him. Why should he go among them again?
There was plenty of other company he could enter. But why had she asked him
if she did not want him? O, well, they were all alike anyway! Even if she
had not already done so, Helen would pass him by sooner or later, like so
many of the others. But Will Fairmont had stuck to him. Maybe he had got
his sister to pity him. Al winced at the thought. "I am getting
contemptible. Will Fairmont would not do that. O, well, I might as well be
done with them all right now!" His eyes flashed defiantly. Then he caught
sight of the little note.
"Friendly enough," he said. "Sounds as honest and sincere as her brother."
Then he added: "I might give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. Yes,
I will go, if for no other reason than that she is Will's sister."
He went. And he enjoyed himself thoroughly thanks partially to Mrs.
Armour's knowledge of human nature. Where others saw only weakness, she
found smarting hurts. She felt that he was on dangerous ground, that he was
ashamed of himself, and that his self-pride and self-respect needed
propping, and she immediately proceeded to prop them.
Helen's grief over her own unsuspected part in his career resulted in an
especial effort to make the picnic a pleasure and success for him. With
that kindly compliance which is more common in those about us than we
sometimes think, the other young people accepted the idea of Alson's being
one of them again, and he found himself, before the termination of the
evening, on almost his old footing with them.
"Wasn't it a success all round?" said Mary that night. "I congratulate you,
Helen, on your ability to extend real hospitality. It was just lovely."
"They did seem to have a good time, didn't they? Al Jarvis was on my
conscience all the evening. Do you think he enjoyed himself?"
"Yes, I do, Helen."
"After what I did it was such a little return to make."
Simultaneously the girls laughed.
"Trifles again! They keep bobbing up, don't they? I suppose this is one of
those of little consequence."
"'Time will tell,'" sententiously quoted Mary.
Time did tell. Years afterward two successful lawyers sat in an office, one
congratulating the other on his brilliant speech of the day.
"It might never have been, Will," said Alson Jarvis, "if your aunt hadn't
somehow, without a single definite word on the subject, shown me the broken
road down which I had about decided to travel through It was at a party she
had in her grounds one night long ago for your sister and Mary Sutton. Do
you remember it?"
Did he? Will's heart glowed with pleasure and gratitude as he thought of
the great result of Mary's little suggestion about inviting Al. How unlike
this was the outcome of that miserable trifle which had played so important
a part in the lawyer's experience.--_Elisabeth Golden, in the Wellspring_.