As the war went on and Ethel heard frequent allusions among the older
people to its great expense and the rapid rise in the price of all the
necessaries of life, she felt an increasing desire to be able to support
herself, and her brother and sisters. Except to them she said nothing to
any one of her relatives of that ardent wish, though constantly
revolving plans in her mind and asking help of God to carry out some one
of them.
She was so young, however, that for several years praying, thinking, and
trying to learn every useful art that those about her could teach, was
all she could do.
Every summer she, Blanche, Harry, and Nannette had the great pleasure of
a visit to Mr. Donald Keith’s; and to the ladies there Ethel opened her
heart, earnestly asking advice as to her future course.
Both replied, “You are too young yet to go into any kind of business,
and are doing the right thing in trying to learn all you can.” That gave
her great encouragement, though she felt it hard to wait, and often
wished she could grow up faster.
The Cootes had moved away in less than a year after the children were
taken from them, and another and very different man, with a lovely wife
and several children, had taken charge of the church and possession of
the parsonage; all of which added very much to Ethel’s enjoyment of her
visit to that neighborhood.
Both there and at home the war was ever the principal and most absorbing
topic of conversation; each victory for the National arms brought
joy—alas! not unmingled with poignant regret, often almost
heart-breaking sorrow for the slain—to each family. George and Albert
Eldon were in many engagements, both were wounded at different times,
yet they escaped without loss of life or limb. First one and then the
other came home on a short furlough—for they had re-enlisted for the
war—were made much of by friends and relatives, their parents and
sisters in particular, and wept over anew when at the expiration of
their time of leave they went back to rejoin their regiment; for they
belonged to the same one.
Mrs. Keith or her mother occasionally wrote to Ethel. In March of 1865 a
letter came, telling the young girl they would be in the city the next
day to get a sight of Mr. Rupert Keith—who had been at home for a time,
a paroled prisoner, but was now returning to his regiment, having been
exchanged—and of his nephews, Percy Landreth and Stuart Ormsby, lads of
seventeen, who had just enlisted and were with their uncle on their way
to the seat of war—and inviting her to meet them at the station, as they
would like to see her and felt sure she would like to see the soldiers,
who were ready to give their lives for the salvation of their country.
Ethel was delighted and easily obtained permission to go.
The troops dined in Philadelphia, and the Keith party had time for a
brief interview with their relatives and friends with whom Ethel was.
She was introduced to and shook hands with them. She was pleased with
the looks of both uncle and nephews, and their evident ardent devotion
to the cause of the Union for whose defence they had enlisted.
She and others watched with tear-dimmed eyes as again the troops took up
their line of march for the South, keeping step to the music of the
band. Would they ever tread those streets again? or were they doomed to
die on some battlefield, or starve and freeze in those filthy
prison-pens of Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Libby? Ah, who could say?
And when would this dreadful war be over?
The last soldier had disappeared from sight, and with a sigh Mrs. Keith
turned to Ethel.
“We have a little shopping to do, my dear,” she said; “so will have to
bid you good-by unless you may go with us and care to do so.”
“Thank you, ma’am, I think I must go home now, when I have done an
errand or two for Aunt Augusta and Cousin Adelaide,” replied the young
girl. “But aunt told me to invite you ladies to go home with me to
dinner. Won’t you?”
“No, my dear; we must finish our shopping and hurry home to our little
folks, who are sure to be wanting mother and grandma. Take our thanks to
your aunt, and tell her we hope to see her at our house one of these
days.”
So the good-bys were said, and the two ladies walked away in one
direction and Ethel in another.
She visited several of the larger stores, making small purchases with
which she had been entrusted, then turned into a side street and was
pursuing her homeward way, when passing a drygoods retail store some
little fancy articles in the window attracted her attention, and she
went in to look at them more closely and price them.
She was waited on by a middle-aged woman of very pleasing countenance,
with whom she presently fell into conversation. There were ready-made
articles of women’s and children’s wear on the counter and in the show
case, and in the back part of the store was a sewing machine with a
partly finished garment upon it.
“I see you have some very pretty aprons and other ready-made things for
children,” remarked Ethel, “and you make them yourself, I suppose?”
glancing toward the machine as she spoke.
“Yes, miss, but I don’t get much time for sewing since I have no one but
myself to tend the store; except when mother finds time now and then to
wait on a customer. That’s not often, though, for the house-work and the
children keep her busy pretty much all the time from daylight to dark.”
“Then I should think it might pay you to have a young girl to wait on
customers.”
“Yes, miss, if I could get the right sort; but most young things are
giddy and thoughtless, some inclined to be saucy to customers, and
others not perfectly honest. I’ve had several that tried me in those
ways; then I had a really good, honest, and capable one; but she had to
leave because her father and brothers went off to the war, the only
sister left at home took sick, and she—Susy, the one that was with
me—had to go and help the poor mother to do the work and take care of
the invalid.”
A thought—a hope that here might be an opening for her—had struck Ethel,
and timidly she put a few questions in regard to the work required, the
time that must be given to it, and the wages paid.
The woman answered her queries pleasantly and patiently, then asked her
if she knew of someone who wanted such a situation and would be at all
likely to suit.
“No, I—I am not certain, but I think perhaps she might if—if her friends
won’t object,” stammered Ethel confusedly and with a vivid blush.
“Is it yourself, miss?” asked Mrs. Baker, the storekeeper, smiling
kindly into the sweet, childish face. “I feel right sure we could get
along nicely together if you’re willing to make the trial, though to be
sure you’re rather young.”
“Oh, I should like to,” returned Ethel in eager delight. “I—I’m an
orphan, and have a dear little brother and two little sisters, and I
want to earn something to make a home for us all, so that we can be
together and be independent.”
“That’s right; independence is a grand thing. But if it’s not an
impertinent question, where and how do you live now?” asked Mrs. Baker,
with a look of keen interest.
“We have two very kind uncles who give us homes—two of us in one house
and two in the other. We see each other every day, but that’s not just
the same as living together.”
“Well, but, dear child, you couldn’t support four—yourself and two
others.”
“Not now, but maybe after a while, if—if I learn how to make money and
work very hard and don’t spend any more than is really necessary.”
“Your wish to do all that does you a deal of credit, but I’m afraid you
can hardly accomplish so much. My husband is gone to the war, and it’s
almost more than I can do to make a living for mother and the children
and myself. So you see I couldn’t pay a big salary to a young thing like
you or to anybody; especially till you, or whoever it was, had learned
something of the business.”
“Oh, no, certainly not! But I’d willingly work for a little till I learn
enough to be really worth more,” returned Ethel half breathlessly; for
she seemed to see some hope—some prospect of an opportunity to begin her
long-desired effort to attain to the little home she and Blanche, Harry
and Nannette, had been talking of for years.
“Well, I like your looks, and—perhaps we might try it,” Mrs. Baker said
after a moment’s cogitation, “though I’m afraid maybe your folks may not
be quite willing.”
Ethel colored at that. “I think I’ll try it, if you are willing,” she
said. “I think I could sell goods—wait on customers, I mean, make
change, and all that; and I know how to use the sewing machine—we have
one at my uncle’s where I live, and I’ve learned on it. So I could help
with that, if you want me to. Indeed, I’d try to make myself so useful
that you wouldn’t want to get rid of me,” she added with a smile.
“I don’t believe I should,” returned Mrs. Baker pleasantly. “Well, you
may come and try it, if you like.”
“Oh, thank you!” exclaimed Ethel, her eyes shining. “When shall I
begin?”
“To-morrow, if you like; but if you’re really decided to come we’d
better settle about the terms. You’d expect to board and sleep here, I
suppose?”
“I suppose so, if you want me to,” returned Ethel with a sigh, thinking
of Nannette’s distress on learning that she was to be left alone at
Uncle Albert’s.
“Yes, I’d rather you would,” said Mrs. Baker. “I’ve a right nice little
bedroom for you opening into mine. Shall I show it to you?”
“Yes, if you please.”
They went into the back part of the house, leaving the store in the care
of Mrs. Ray, the mother of Mrs. Baker, up a narrow winding stairway and
into a small room opening on one side into the hall, on another into a
larger bedroom. Everything looked neat and clean, but the furniture was
scant and plain, by no means an agreeable contrast to the room Ethel now
occupied at her uncle’s, or indeed with any room in his large and
commodious dwelling.
Ethel was conscious of some sinking of the heart at the thought of the
not pleasant exchange, but independence was sweet; still sweeter the
thought of getting even one step nearer the realization of her dream of
the little home of their own for herself, brother, and sisters.
And it was quite as good a room—as well furnished at least—as the one
they had occupied at Mr. Coote’s.
Mrs. Baker could almost read the young girl’s thoughts in her speaking
countenance.
“I dare say your room at your uncle’s must be far better furnished and
larger than this,” she remarked. “I wish for your sake I had a nicer one
to offer you.”
“But one can’t have everything in this world,” returned Ethel, forcing a
smile, “and I had rather be independent even in a small and poorly
furnished ten by ten room than living on somebody else in a palace.”
“That’s a right feeling, I think,” said Mrs. Baker. “I don’t have any
great amount of respect for folks that are willing to live at other
people’s expense when they might take care of themselves.”
With that she led the way down the stairs and into the store again,
where they continued their talk till they came to a definite
arrangement. It was that Ethel should come in a day or two and try how
she liked the business, and how well she could suit her employer. She
told of the needlework she had been doing at odd moments for the past
years since her return to the city, and of which she had now accumulated
a large supply, and asked if Mrs. Baker would like to buy them of her
for sale in the store.
“I don’t know,” was the reply in a meditative tone. “Bring them along if
you like and let me see them. I’m inclined to think your better plan
would be to buy some muslin and make up the garments; then sell them on
your own account here in the store; you may do it and welcome.”
“Oh, thank you! how kind you are!” exclaimed Ethel joyously. Then with a
promise to be there early the next day, she bade good-by and hastened on
her homeward way in a flutter of excitement. She was, oh, so glad that at
last a prospect was opening before her of being some day able to earn
money for the support of herself, and her brother and sisters. And how
delightful that she could at once relieve her uncles of all expense for
her own maintenance. They would surely be pleased that she was to become
at once self-supporting; for only a day or two before this she had
overheard some talk between her cousins Arabella and Olive in which they
spoke of the expense their father and uncle were at in supporting their
orphan cousins, pronouncing it a shame that it should be so now when
everything was so costly in consequence of the war.
It had made Ethel feel very badly, and greatly increased her longing
desire to be able to earn her own living; and surely, taking all this
into consideration, her uncles must approve of the effort she was about
to make.
And it could hardly be worse to work in that store for so pleasant and
kind a woman, as Mrs. Baker evidently was, than to be expected to wait
at all times and seasons upon her aunt and cousins, meekly receiving and
obeying all their orders, and bearing fault-finding and scolding without
retort or remonstrance, no matter how unkind and unjust she might feel
it to be. The only hard part would be the separation from her brother
and younger sisters, particularly Nannette, who was so accustomed to
lean upon her and had been so long her special charge. The tears would
fall as she thought of that.
But suddenly realizing that she had certainly been out much longer than
she had expected, and would probably be assailed with a torrent of
reproaches on her arrival at home, she hastily wiped away her tears and
quickened her steps.
Her reception on her arrival was even worse than she had feared.
“Mrs. Eldon wants you up there in her dressin’ room right away, Miss
Ethel,” said the girl who opened the door and admitted her in answer to
her ring.
“Very well,” Ethel replied, and tripped lightly up the stairs, though
her heart beat at the prospect before her.
She found her aunt lying idly on the sofa in her dressing gown and
slippers, her hair in curl papers, and a paper-covered novel in her
hand. “Well, miss,” she exclaimed, “a pretty time you have been gone,
leaving me lying here with nobody to read to me; for your cousins are
all too busy of course, and not one of them has a voice so well suited
to allay the nervousness that drives me so nearly distracted.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Augusta,” replied the young girl in a patient tone. “I
did not mean to stay so long, but I had some errands——”
“Oh, did you match that lace?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ethel answered, taking a little roll from her pocket.
“Here it is.”
“Then make haste and carry it to the sewing room, and tell Miss Finch to
baste it in the neck and sleeves of that new black silk of mine. Then
leave your hat and sack in your own room and come here and read to me.”
Ethel, though longing to go in search of Nannette, from whom she must
part, in a large measure, so soon, also to consider and gather together
what she would need to take with her to Mrs. Baker’s, obeyed the order
without any show of reluctance, and spent the next hour in reading to
her aunt.
By that time Mrs. Eldon had fallen asleep, perceiving which the young
girl stole silently from the room and went to her own.
But she had scarcely reached it and shut herself in when the door was
opened again by someone on the outside and Arabella put in her head,
asking, “Where’s that sewing silk I told you to get me? and the buttons?
did you match them?”
“Yes; here they are,” returned Ethel, taking them from her pocket and
handing them to her cousin.
“And why did you not bring them to me at once when you got home?”
“Aunt Augusta has kept me busy ever since.”
“You are not in her room now, are you?” queried Arabella sarcastically.
“No, but I have just come from it, and I really forgot all about the
purchases for you, Arabella.”
“Well let me advise you not to forget so readily another time,” was the
haughty rejoinder, and Arabella hurried away; but Ethel heard her remark
to Minnie and Olive as she went into the room across the hall, “That
girl isn’t worth her salt, and papa doing everything for her—feeding,
clothing, and educating her. Really it would be a fine thing for him and
us if she’d show spirit enough to go off and earn a living for herself.”
“She’s too young,” said Olive, “papa wouldn’t think of letting her do
it; and after all she is quite useful to us—doing many a little job of
mending and fixing that we wouldn’t care to do for ourselves.”
“Well, yes, she does; but if she were not here we’d do them ourselves
and papa would be saved that much needless expense.”
“Needless?”
“Yes; for she is now old enough to earn her own living. There’s many a
younger girl than she doing that.”
“Nonsense! you know well enough, that neither papa nor Uncle George
would let her do it,” Ethel heard her cousin Minnie exclaim; but then,
with a sudden recollection that she was hearing what was perhaps not
intended for her ear, she closed the door with tears of wounded feeling
rolling down her cheeks, and began her work of gathering together
articles of clothing and other things she must take with her to her new
abode.
She was glad that she had said positively she would go, for if her
uncles should object she could tell them she had made a promise and must
be allowed to keep it. Yet, oh, how she dreaded the telling!
At the six o’clock dinner she was very silent and a close observer might
have detected traces of tears on her cheeks, but her uncle’s thoughts
were upon the news of the day and some business transaction, and he
failed to notice anything peculiar about his little niece.
On leaving the table he went into the library and took up the evening
paper. His wife and older daughters had gone to their own apartments to
dress for an evening party or concert, the younger children to the
playroom, and he was alone till Ethel stole quietly in after him.
He glanced up at her as she drew near his chair.
“What is it, Ethel, my dear? have you something to say to me?” he asked
pleasantly, “something you want no one else to hear?” Then noticing how
her color came and went, that her eyes were full of tears and she was
trembling visibly, “Why, what is it, child?” and he drew her near to his
side, put an arm about her as he spoke, and bade her not to be afraid to
tell him all that troubled her.
“Oh, uncle, you are so kind!” she sobbed, the tears now rolling down her
cheeks; “I do love you so, but—but I can’t bear to stay here and be such
an expense and burden to you when you have so many children of your own
to provide for and I ought to be earning my own living.”
“Tut, tut, who has put all that nonsense into your head?” he asked in a
tone of mingled amusement and irritation. “I won’t have it. I am
entirely able to take care of my brother’s little girl as well as my
own. So stop crying, dry your eyes, and be as happy and merry as you
can, nor ever think that uncle grudges you your home, victuals, and
clothes.”
“Oh, I don’t, I don’t think that, dear Uncle Albert,” she said, putting
her arms about his neck and kissing him with ardent affection; “but I’m
almost a woman now and I want to earn my own living and, as soon as I’m
able, to help my brother and sisters; and, and—oh, please don’t be angry
with me, but I—I’ve made an engagement to be a clerk in a little store
with a very nice kind woman who will treat me just like one of the
family and——”
“Is it possible, Ethel!” exclaimed Mr. Eldon, and his tone was full of
displeasure. “Indeed I shall allow nothing of the kind. Let my brother’s
daughter go into a store? No, indeed! not while I have abundant means to
support her as well as my own family.”
“But, uncle, I’ve promised,” sobbed Ethel, “and you know we must keep
our promises.”
“I dare say the woman will release you from the promise; at least for a
consideration, if not without. Ah, here comes your Uncle George,” as
just then that gentleman entered the room.
“What do you think, brother? This foolish child has—without consulting
you or me, or anybody else for that matter—engaged herself as clerk to a
woman keeping a little thread and needle store.”
“Well, that’s astounding news!” exclaimed Mr. George Eldon, seating
himself and looking very hard, with something of a frown on his face, at
Ethel. “Come here, child, and tell me all about it.”
Ethel obeyed, wiping her eyes and saying pleadingly, “Please, uncle,
don’t be angry with me. I—I can’t bear to be such an expense to Uncle
Albert now when I’m getting so old, and so——”
“Ay, yes, very big and very old,” he returned, taking her hand and
drawing her to him; “so big and so old that it must cost a great deal to
feed and dress you. Uncle Albert ought to be very glad to get rid of
such an expense. And you are never of any use; don’t do any errands for
Aunt Augusta or her daughters or make yourself useful in any way.” He
looked so grave and spoke in such a serious tone that Ethel felt
puzzled.
“I have tried to be of use, uncle,” she said humbly, “but I know they
can do very well without me. And I want to learn to make money, so that
I can help Blanche and Harry and Nannette; because after a while it will
cost a great deal to clothe and feed and educate them; and you and Uncle
Albert have your own children to take care of.”
“Well, really! she’s not so much of a baby as I had thought,” he said,
looking searchingly into her face with a grim sort of a smile on his
own. “How old are you, Ethel, my sage niece?”
“In my sixteenth year, uncle. So you see I’m not a baby but almost a
woman.”
“Ah, well! let us hear all about these plans and prospects.”
Thus encouraged, Ethel went at once into all the particulars of her
interview with Mrs. Baker, what she had engaged to do, and what she
hoped to accomplish. Her uncles listened attentively, and finding they
could not persuade her to a willing relinquishment of her project,
finally consented to allow her to make the trial; stipulating however
that if she found the exertion too great, or for any reason was unhappy
or uncomfortable in her new quarters, she should at once give up the
effort at self-support, and return to her present home; Uncle Albert
assuring her of a warm welcome there.