THE WINSEY FROCK.
Her voice almost trembling with suppressed excitement, Cecile turned to
her little brother.
"Maurice, Miss Smith lives here. She is an English lady. I must see
her. You will stay outside with Pericard, Maurice; and Toby will take
care of you. Don't go away. Just walk up and down. I shan't be long;
and, Maurice, you won't go away?"
"No," answered Maurice, "I won't run away. I will eat some of that nice
breakfast without waiting for you, Cecile; for I am hungry, but I won't
run away."
Then Maurice took Pericard's hand. Toby wagged his tail knowingly, and
Cecile ran up the steps of Miss Smith's house. A young girl, with the
round fresh face of old England, answered her modest summons.
"Yes," she said, "Miss Smith was at home." She would inquire if she
could see the little girl from London. She invited Cecile to step into
the hall; and a moment or two later showed her into a very small,
neatly furnished parlor. This small room was quite in English fashion,
and bore marks of extreme neatness, joined to extremely slender means.
Cecile stood by the round table in the center of the room. She had now
taken her purse from the bosom of her dress, and when Miss Smith
entered, she came up to her at once, holding it in her hand.
"If you please," said Cecile, "Jesus the Guide says you will take care
of this for me. He sent me to you, and said you would take great, great
care of my money. 'Tis all quite right. Will you open the purse,
please? 'Tis a Russia-leather purse, and there's forty pounds in it,
and about eleven or twelve more, I think. I must have some to take me
and Maurice and Toby down south. But Jesus says you will take great
care of the rest."
"Child," said Miss Smith. She was a very little woman, with a white,
thin, and worn face. She looked nearer fifty than forty. Her hair was
scanty and gray. When Cecile offered her the purse she flushed
painfully, stepped back a pace or two, and pushed it from her.
"Child," she repeated, "are you mad, or is it Satan is sending you
here? Pretty little girl, with the English tongue, do you know that I
am starving?"
"Oh!" said Cecile. Her face showed compassion, but she did not attempt
to take up her purse. On the contrary, she left it on the table close
to Miss Smith, and retreated to the farther side herself.
"Starving means being very, very hungry," said Cecile. "I know what
that means, just a little. It is a bad feeling. I am sorry. There is a
turkey egg waiting for me outside. I will fetch it for you in a moment.
But you are quite wrong in saying it was Satan sent me to you. I don't
know anything about Satan. It was the blessed, blessed Jesus the Guide
sent me. He came last night in a dream. He told me to go to the
Faubourg St. G---- and I should find an English lady, and she would
take great care of my Russia-leather purse. It was a true warning, just
as Joseph's dream was true. He was warned of God in a dream, just as I
was last night."
"And I am the only Englishwoman in the faubourg," said Miss Smith. "I
have lived here for ten years now, and I never heard of any other. I
teach, or, rather, I did teach English in a Pension de Demoiselles
close by, and I have been dismissed. I was thought too old-fashioned. I
can't get any more employment, and I had just broken into my last franc
piece when you came. I might have done without food, but Molly was _so_
hungry. Molly is going to-morrow, and I shall be alone. Yes, little
English girl, you do right to reprove me. I, too, have loved the Lord
Jesus. Sit down! Sit down on that chair, and tell me, in my own dear
tongue, the story of that purse."
"I am not an English girl," said Cecile; "I am French; I come from the
south, from the Pyrenees; but my father brought me to England when I
was two years old, and I don't know any French. My father died, and I
had a stepmother; and my stepmother died, and when she was dying she
gave me a charge. It was a great charge, and it weighs heavily on my
heart, and makes me feel very old. My stepmother had a daughter who ran
away from her when she married my father. My stepmother thinks she went
to France, and got lost in France, and she gave me a purse of
money--some to give to Lovedy, and some to spend in looking for her. I
feel that Lovedy has gone south, and I am going down south, too, to
find her. I, and my little brother, and our dog, and a big, kind
boy--we are all going south to find Lovedy. And last night Jesus the
Guide came to me in a dream, and told me that my purse was in danger,
and He told me to come to you. Satan had nothing at all to say to it.
It was Jesus sent me to you."
"I believe you, child," said Miss Smith. "You bring the strangest tale,
but I believe you. You bring a purse containing a lot of money to a
starving woman. Well, I never was brought so low as not to be honest
yet. How much money is in the purse, little girl?"
"There are four ten-pound notes--that makes forty pounds," said
Cecile--"that is Lovedy's money; there are about eleven pounds of the
money I must spend. You must give me that eleven pounds, please, Miss
Smith, and you must keep the forty pounds very, _very_ safely until I
come for it, or send for it."
"What is your name, little girl?"
"Cecile D'Albert."
"Well, Cecile, don't you think that if you had a dream about the forty
pounds being in danger, that the eleven pounds will be in danger too?
Someone must have guessed you had that money, little one, and and if
they can't get hold of the forty pounds, they will take the eleven."
Cecile felt herself growing a trifle pale.
"I never thought of that," she said. "I cannot look for Lovedy without
a little money. What shall I do, Miss Smith?"
"Let me think," said Miss Smith.
She rested her chin on her hand and one or two puckers came into her
brow, and she screwed up her shrewd little mouth. After a moment or two
her face brightened.
"Is the money English money, little girl?" she said.
"Yes," answered Cecile; "the captain on board the boat from England did
change some, but all the French money is gone now."
"That won't do at all, Cecile; you must have French money. Now, my
dear, will you kindly take that eleven pounds out of your purse and
reckon it before me?"
Cecile did so--eleven sovereigns lay glittering and tempting on Miss
Smith's table.
"There, child, I am going to put on my bonnet and shawl, and I shall
take that money out with me, and be back again in a few moments. You
wait here, Cecile, I will bring back French money; you watch your purse
until I return."
While Miss Smith was out, there came a ring to the door bell, and the
little fresh-colored English servant brought in a letter, and laid it
beside the purse which Cecile stood near, but did not offer to touch.
In about twenty minutes Miss Smith reappeared. She looked excited, and
even cheerful.
"It does me good to help one of the Lord's little ones," she said, "and
it does me good to hear the English tongue; except from Molly, I never
hear it now, and Molly goes to-morrow. Well, never mind. Now, Cecile,
listen to me. Do you see this bag? It is big, and heavy, it is full of
your money; twenty-five francs for every sovereign--two hundred and
seventy-five francs in all. You could not carry that heavy bag about
with you; it would be discovered, and you would be robbed at once.
"But I have hit on a plan. See! I have brought in another parcel--this
parcel contains cotton wool. I perceive that little frock you have on
has three tucks in it. I am going to unpick those tucks, and line them
softly with cotton wool, and lay the francs in the cotton wool. I will
do it cleverly, and no one will guess that any money could be hidden in
that common little winsey frock. Now, child, you slip it off, and I
will put the money in, and I will give you a needle and thread and a
nice little sharp scissors, and every night when folks are quite sound
asleep, and you are sure no one is looking, you must unpick enough of
one of the tucks to take out one franc, or two francs, according as you
want them; only be sure you sew the tuck up again. The money will make
the frock a trifle heavy, and you must never take it off your back
whatever happens until you get to the English girl; but I can hit on no
better plan."
"I think it is a lovely, lovely plan," said Cecile, and then she
slipped off the little frock, and Miss Smith wrapped her carefully in
an old shawl of her own; and the next two hours were spent in
skillfully lining the tucks with their precious contents.
When this was finished Miss Smith got a hot iron, and ironed the tucks
so skillfully that they looked as flat as they had done before. Some of
the money, also, she inserted in the body of the frock, and thus
enriched, it was once more put on by Cecile.
"Now, Cecile," said Miss Smith, "I feel conceited, for I don't believe
anyone will ever think of looking there for your money; and I am to
keep the Russia-leather purse and the forty pounds and they are for an
English girl called Lovedy. How shall I know her when she comes, or
will you only return to fetch them yourself, little one?"
"I should like that best," said Cecile; "but I might die, or be very
ill, and then Lovedy would never get her money. Miss Smith, perhaps you
will write something on a little bit of paper, and then give the paper
to me, and if I cannot come myself I will give the paper to Lovedy, or
somebody else; when you see your own bit of paper again, then you will
know that you are to give Lovedy's purse to the person who gives you
the paper."
"That is not a bad plan," said Miss Smith; "at least," she added, "I
can think of no better. I will write something then for you, Cecile."
She forthwith provided herself with a sheet of paper and a pen and
wrote as follows:
"Received this day of Cecile D'Albert the sum of Forty Pounds, in four
Bank of England notes, inclosed in a Russia-leather purse. Will return
purse and money to the bearer of this paper whoever that person may be.
"So help me God. HANNAH SMITH."
As Hannah Smith added those words, "So help me God," a deep flush came
to her pale face and the thin hand that held the pen trembled.
"There, Cecile," she said, "you must keep that little piece of paper
even more carefully than the money, for anyone who secured this might
claim the money. I will sew it into your frock myself." Which the good
soul did; and then the old maid blessed the child, and she went away.
Long after Cecile had left her, Miss Smith sat on by the table--that
purse untouched by her side.
"A sudden and sore temptation," she said, at last, aloud. "But it did
not last. So help me God, it will never return--SO HELP ME GOD."
Then she fell on her knees and began to pray, and as she prayed she
wept.
It was nearly an hour before the lonely Englishwoman rose from her
knees. When she did so, she took up the purse to put it by. In doing
this, she for the first time noticed the letter which had arrived when
she was out. She opened it, read it hastily through. Then Miss Smith,
suddenly dropping both purse and letter fell on her knees again.
The letter contained the offer of a much better situation as English
teacher than the one she had been deprived of. Thus did God send both
the temptation and the deliverance almost simultaneously.