THE WORKING PARTY.
"ARE these fruits of the sermon on Friday night?" said Miss Manners to
Mr. Somers, as they finished winding up their parish accounts on Monday
morning. "Not only, as you know, here is Grace Hollis wanting to join
Mrs. Somers's Tuesday working parties, Jessie begging to help at the
Sunday school; but I find that good little Amy Lee went and sat with
poor Edwin Smithers for half an hour on Sunday after church, showing him
pictures, and she has promised his mother to come and look in on him
every day. It is very nice of the Lees to have thought of it, and to
spare her."
"Yes," said Mrs. Somers, "the Lees are always anxious to do right."
"I had a talk with Charlotte just now. She came to get some flannel for
Mrs. Long. She says she will make it up for her, if the old woman can
have it out of the club. Well, she says it is quite striking how all
those girls have been moved by Mr. Soulsby's sermon on Friday evening.
Amy came home and nearly said it all off to her Aunt Rose, and the girls
were all talking about it in the workroom in the morning, full of
earnestness to make some effort."
"I saw they were looking very attentive," said Mr. Somers. "Shall you
accept Jessie Hollis's help?"
"I think I can make a class up for her."
"I suppose it would be a pity to check her, but do you imagine that she
knows anything?"
"I don't know; but she is not at all a stupid girl, and she cannot go
far wrong with the questions on the Catechism and Gospels that I shall
give her. Indeed I had thought of asking her and Margaret Roller, and,
perhaps, Amy Lee, to come and prepare the lessons here on Friday
evenings after church."
"A good plan," said Mr. Somers, "if it be not giving you too much to
do."
"Not a bit, especially at this time of year, when nobody wants me in the
evenings. My only doubt is whether it is not keeping the girls out too
late, but I will see whether it can be managed. The children might be
better taught, and the teachers might learn something themselves in this
indirect way."
Perhaps this was Miss Dora's way of acting on the sermon, but she could
not begin that week, as a friend was coming to spend the Friday with
her.
Meantime Grace Hollis had joined the working party that met every
Tuesday afternoon for an hour to make clothes for a very poor district
in London. She had been sometimes known to say that it was all waste of
time to make things and send them away to thriftless, shiftless folk;
but she had heard something of the love of our neighbour, and our
membership with the rest of our Lord's Body, which had touched her
heart. So she brought her thimble and needle, to join the working party
who sat round the Rectory dining-table. Mrs. Somers and Miss Manners
shook hands, made her welcome, and found her a seat and some work. Grace
looked about her to be sure who the party were. Mrs. Nowell, the
gardener's wife, sat next to her. Then came little Miss Agnes from the
Hall, sewing hard away, and Lucy Drew from Chalk-pit Farm, who was about
her age, next to her, and old Miss Pemberton knitting.
"A mixed lot," said Grace to herself, and then her eye lit upon deformed
Naomi Norris, of whom she did not approve at all. Did not the girl come
of a low dissenting family, and had not her father the presumption to
keep a little shop in Hazel Lane which took away half the custom,
especially as they pretended to make toffee? Meanwhile here was Miss
Wenlock, the governess at the squire's, and Miss Dora reading aloud to
the party in turn. It was the history of some mission work in London,
and Miss Lee, who was there, listened with great pleasure, as did many
of the others. Indeed she well might, for her eldest sister's son hoped
one day to be a missionary. But Grace was not used to being read to,
and, as she said, "it fidgeted her sadly," and she was wondering all the
time what mistakes mother would make in the shop without her, and she
began to be haunted with a doubt whether she had put out a parcel of
raisins that Farmer Drew's man was to call for. The worry about it
prevented her from attending to a word that was read; indeed she could
hardly keep herself from jumping up, making up an excuse, and rushing
home to see about the raisins!
Then she greatly disapproved of the shape of the bedgown she had been
set to make, and did not believe it would sit properly. It was ladies'
cutting towards which she felt contemptuous, and yet she would have
thought it impolite to interfere. Besides, it might make the whole
sitting go on longer, and Grace was burning to get home. At last the
reading ended, but oh! my patience, that creature Naomi was actually
putting herself forward to ask some nonsensical question, where some
place was, and Miss Agnes must needs get a map, and every one go and
look at it--Grace too, not to be behindhand or uncivil to the young
ladies; but had not she had enough of maps and such useless stupid
things long ago when she left school at Miss Perkins's?
When at last this was over, Mrs. Somers came and spoke to her while she
was putting on her hat, and thanked her pleasantly, saying that she was
afraid that beginning in the middle of a book made it less interesting,
but that one day more would finish it. Then she added "I don't like the
pattern of that bedgown, do you?"
"No, Mrs. Somers, not at all," replied Grace. "It quite went against me
to put good work into it."
"I wonder whether you could help us to a better shape next time," said
Mrs. Somers. "We should be very much obliged to you. This pattern came
out of a needlework book, and I am not satisfied about it."
Grace promised, and went away in better humour, but more because she had
been made important than because she cared for what she had been doing.
She was glad no one could say she had been behindhand with her service,
but it was a burthen to her, and she did not open her mind to enter into
it so as to make it otherwise.
Indeed, her mind was more full of her accounts and the bad debts, and of
the cheapest way of getting in her groceries than of anything else. As
she walked back through the village she wondered whether Mrs. Somers and
Miss Manners would send to her mother's for their brown sugar this
summer. That would make it worth while to go to a better but more
expensive place, and have in a larger stock; and Grace went on reckoning
the risk all the time, and wondering whether the going to the working
parties would secure the ladies' custom. In that case the time would not
be wasted. It did not come into Grace's head whether what she had
thought of for the service of God she might be turning to the service of
Mammon, if she only just endured it for the sake of standing well with
the gentry. But then, was it not her duty to consider her shop and her
mother's interest?
She was quite vexed and angry when she saw Jessie go and fetch the big
Family Bible that evening, turning off the whole pile of lesson-books to
which it formed the base.
"Now what can you be doing that for?" she said sharply.
"I want to prepare my lesson for to-morrow," said Jessie.
"And is not a little Bible good enough for you, without upsetting the
whole table?"
"My Bible has got no references," said Jessie.
"And what do little children like that want of references? If you are to
be turning the house upside down and wasting time like that over
preparing as you call it, I don't know as ma will let you undertake
it."
"I have ironed all the collars and cuffs, Grace," said Jessie; "yes, and
looked over the stockings."
Grace had no more to say; she knew Jessie had wonderful eyes for a
ladder or a hole; but it worried her and gave her a sense of disrespect
that the pyramid which surmounted the big Bible should be interfered
with, or that the Book itself should have its repose interfered with
"for a pack of dirty children," when it had never been opened before
except to register christenings, or to be spread out and read when some
near relation died, as part of the mourning ceremony.
It really made her feel as if something unfortunate had happened to see
the large print pages on the little round table, and her sister peering
into the references and looking them out in her own little Bible, then
diligently marking them.
Her mother, too, asked what Jessie was about, and though she did not
say anything against her employment, their looking on, and the
expression on Grace's face, worried Jessie so much that she could not
think, and only put a slip of paper into her own book at each she found.
The chapter she had chosen was the Parable of the Sower, on which she
had once heard a sermon. She was amazed to find how many parallel
passages there were, and how beautifully they explained one another when
she made time for comparing them on Sunday morning. She saw herself
beforehand expounding them to the children, and winning their hearts, as
her friend in the hospital had described, and she was quite ready in her
neat black silk and fur jacket, with a little blue velvet hat, when Amy
Lee came to call for her, in her grey merino, black cloth coat, and
little hat to match.
They met Miss Manners at the school door, and were pleasantly greeted,
and taken into the large cheerful room, all hung round with maps and
pictures, where the classes were assembling, and one or two of the other
teachers had come.
The bell was heard ringing, and while the children trooped in, Miss
Manners showed Jessie a chair with some books laid open upon it, the
class register on the top, and said:
"I am sorry there has not been time to talk over your work this week;
but I have laid out the books for you, and if you are in any difficulty
come and ask me."
By this time the children had come in and taken their places, and Jessie
was pleased to see that her class was of children of eight or nine years
old--not such little ones as Amy had threatened her with. Miss Manners
went to the harmonium and gave out a Sunday morning hymn, which was very
sweetly sung, and then she read prayers, everybody kneeling, and making
the responses, so that Jessie enjoyed it greatly, and felt quite
refreshed by the prayer for a blessing on the teachers and the taught.
Then Miss Manners told the eight little girls who stood in a row that
Miss Hollis would teach them, and she hoped they would be very good and
steady and obedient, and say their lessons perfectly.
Jessie knew all but two who came from the other end of the parish, and
were not customers of her mother--at least she knew what families they
belonged to, and had only to learn their Christian names from her list.
"Collect, please teacher," said the first girl, Susan Bray, very much in
the voice in which she would have said "Candles, please miss," in the
shop.
The Prayer-book was uppermost, and Jessie found she had to hear the
Collect for the day repeated by five perfectly, by two rather badly, and
one broke down altogether. The question-book lay open under it. Some of
the questions were very easy, but of others Jessie was not sure that the
children were right when they replied to some quite glibly, and she was
not sure how to help them in others.
Then followed the opening of books again. Jessie was longing to give out
all she had to say about the Sower, and began bidding them turn to it in
St. Matthew, but Susan Bray stopped her most decisively. "Oh! please
teacher, we've done that ever so long ago. We always reads the Gospel
for the day, and here's the question-book, and it's got answers." And
she thrust it right under the nose of Jessie, who by this time did not
quite love Miss Susan Bray. She had plainly been sharp enough to see
when her teacher was at fault.
The children read the Gospel for the day. It was Refreshing Sunday, so
it was not a difficult one; the children were ready with the answers
till the application came, and then Jessie had again to help them, which
she did by reading the printed answers and making them repeat them after
her, word for word. While she was doing this with Mary Smithers, who
certainly was dulness itself, at one end of the class, there was a
whispering at the other, and she saw two children trying on each other's
gloves, and she quickly put an end to that, and went on with another
question and answer. The moment her eye was off Susan Bray and Lily
Bell, however, they began comparing some gay cards. Jessie turned on
them: "You are playing with those things. Give them to me."
Lily Bell began to cry, and Susan pertly said, "It's our markers,
teacher."
"I don't care. I won't have you idle. Give them to me, this instant."
Just then the church bell began to ring, and there was a general
moving; but Jessie would not be beaten, and caused the two cards to be
given up to her. The girls both cried with all their might while she was
marking the class down, and, as they no doubt intended, Miss Manners
came to see what was the matter.
"Please, ma'am, teacher has taken away our markers, and we shan't know
where our Psalms is."
"They were playing with them," said Jessie.
"We wasn't. We was finding our Psalms," said Susan.
"You should not have done so while Miss Hollis was teaching," said Miss
Manners. "I hope, if she is good enough to give them back to you, that
you will attend better in the afternoon."
Jessie felt it all a little flat and disappointing, all the more so that
Amy Lee joined her, and talked all the way to church about the
children, who had all passed through her hands when she was a pupil
teacher, telling all their little tiresome ways. It seemed to rub off
all the gloss, and to change her scheme of feeding the young lambs for
the Great Shepherd's sake into a mere struggle with tiresome, fidgety
children.
Still her hopes and her spirits rose again at church. She had her
expounding of the Sower on her mind, and hoped yet to deliver it when
she went to afternoon school; but there proved to be the Catechism and a
whole set of hymns to be said, and questions to be asked about them.
These questions did not come very readily to such an unpractised tongue
as hers, and she thought she could lead off into the discourse she had
thought out over the Bible. But she had hardly gone through twenty words
before she saw a squabble going on between Lily Bell and Mary Smithers,
and she had no sooner separated them, and taken up the thread of her
discourse about grace being sown and watered in our hearts, than Susan
Bray popped up up with "Please, teacher, it's time to read to us--Its
_Miss Angelina_," pointing to a little gay story-book.
"You should not be rude, and interrupt," said Jessie; whereupon Susan
pouted, the two idlest began to play with each other's fingers, and, as
soon as she paused to take breath, Lily Bell jumped up, and brought her
the book open.
She had to give up the point, and begin to read something that did not
seem to her nearly so improving as her own discourse, as it was all
about a doll left behind upon a heath; but the children listened to it
eagerly.
Was this all the good she was to do by sacrificing all her time on
Sunday? Like Grace, she felt much inclined to give it up, and all the
more when Florence Cray came into the work-room the next morning,
laughing and saying--
"Well, the impudence of some folk! There was that there little Bray! I
hear that she should say that Miss Hollis was put to teach her, and she
warn't agoing to care for one as wasn't a lady."
"I can make her mind me fast enough," said Amy.
"O, you are bred to be a teacher," said Florence; "that doesn't count.
Nobody else should trouble themselves with the tiresome little
ungrateful things. I'm sure I wouldn't; but then I don't set up for
goodness, nor want to be thought better than other folk."
Jessie had known that something of this kind would be said, and was
prepared for it; but the child's speech vexed her sorely. However, she
said--
"I'm not going to be beat by a chit like that," and at that moment Miss
Lee came in, and that kind of chatter ceased.
But Jessie's cheeks burned over her work, and she thought how foolish
she had been to let her fancy for doing good, and trying to live up to
the sermon, lead her where she was allowed to do nothing, but get
herself teased and insulted, right and left.
Should she give up? That would look so silly. Yes, but would it not
serve Miss Manners right for giving her such stupid, unspiritual kind of
teaching to do, and also serve the children right for their pertness and
ingratitude?
No, she could not give up in this way. She had begun, and she must go
on, at least till she had some reason for giving up respectably and
civilly--only she wished she had known how unlike it was to what she had
expected before she had undertaken it!
Then she was sensible of a certain odd, uppish, self-asserting feeling
within her. She used to have it in old times, but she had learnt to
distrust it, and to know that it generally came when she was in a bad
way.
Was she thinking of pleasing herself, or of offering a little work to
please God, and try to let the good seed turn to good fruit? Ah! but was
it all a mistake? Was becoming a mark for Susan Bray to worry, doing any
good at all?