[Illustration: WELCOME]
MAYBEE’S STEPPING-STONES.
BY
ARCHIE FELL,
AUTHOR OF “EARTHEN VESSELS,” “WORTH WHILE,”
“APRON-STRINGS,” ETC.
“The gold of that land is good.”—GEN. 2:12.
BOSTON:
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY
To the
CHILDREN OF THE SABBATH SCHOOL,
INTO WHOSE HAPPY FACES
I HAVE LOOKED, FROM WEEK TO WEEK,
FOR SO MANY YEARS,
AND WHO HAVE LISTENED SO EAGERLY FOR THE SPOKEN
WORD, THOUGH NEVER SO UNWORTHY,
This little Volume
IS MOST LOVINGLY DEDICATED,
WITH A PRAYER
THAT IT MAY BE INDEED
TO THEM
_STEPPING-STONES TOWARDS HEAVEN_.
CONTENTS.
I. Jan. 7. MOTHER KNOWS BEST 7
II. ″ 14. LED INTO SIN—AND OUT 14
III. ″ 21. NAUGHTY DICK 21
IV. ″ 28. THE LITTLE RED HOUSE 27
V. Feb. 4. “DOT” 35
VI. ″ 11. CHOOSING A MASTER 42
VII. ″ 18. TOD’S STRATAGEM 50
VIII. ″ 25. THE HELPING HAND 57
IX. March 4. BELL’S BARGAIN 65
X. ″ 11. WALKING WITH GOD 72
XI. ″ 18. BROWN-HAIRED BESS 79
XII. ″ 25. MAYBEE’S STEPPING-STONES 81
SECOND QUARTER.
I. April 1. BETTER THAN “A RICH COUSIN.” 91
II. ″ 8. TRYPHOSA 99
III. ″ 15. PLAYING “INJUNS” 107
IV. ″ 22. GREEDY BELL AND HONEST BENNIE 115
V. ″ 29. GOD’S SIDE THE STRONGEST 123
VI. May 6. STRONGER THAN PAPA 131
VII. ″ 13. REAL “MINDING” 133
VIII. ″ 20. AND THE LAST, FIRST 139
IX. ″ 27. PHOSY’S WORK 145
X. June 3. PHOSY’S HYMN 154
XI. ″ 10. MAYBEE’S REBELLION 155
XII. ″ 17. “BECAUSE” 163
XIII. ″ 24. WHY FRED WAS PUNISHED 168
THIRD QUARTER.
I. July 1. FARMER VANCE 170
II. ″ 8. TELLING THE TIDINGS 177
III. ″ 15. JESUS’ NAME 184
IV. ″ 22. THE INVITATION 190
V. ″ 29. DICK’S “YOKE” 195
VI. Aug. 5. MAYBEE’S PLEDGE 206
VII. ″ 12. THE “NEW SONG” 216
VIII. ″ 19. THE WONDERFUL BOOK 223
IX. ″ 26. AUNTY MCFANE’S HYMN 230
X. Sept. 2. HOW TO BE GOOD 232
XI. ″ 9. BELL’S BIBLE-READING 240
XII. ″ 16. WHAT COUSIN MATE SAID 249
XIII. ″ 23. “CHRIST” OR “SELF” 253
XIV. ″ 30. MISS LOMY’S SERMON 256
FOURTH QUARTER.
I. Oct. 7. HOW NOT TO BE TROUBLED 264
II. ″ 14. TOD’S “PERSECUTE” 268
III. ″ 21. WILL CARTER 276
IV. ″ 28. HOW DICK CARRIED THE DAY 283
V. Nov. 4. HOW FARMER VANCE REASONED 290
VI. ″ 11. FARMER VANCE’S “LEADING” 297
VII. ″ 18. ALMOST PERSUADED 302
VIII. ″ 25. NEEDLE ROCK 304
IX. Dec. 2. THE RESCUE 312
X. ″ 9. WILL’S DEBT 319
XI. ″ 16. MR. BLACKMAN 324
XII. ″ 23. MAYBEE’S “PREACH” AND PRACTICE 329
XIII. ″ 30. UNCLE THED’S CHRISTMAS PLAN 340
MAYBEE’S STEPPING-STONES.
I.
MOTHER KNOWS BEST.
“But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had
given him.”
“Tod’s coming!” said Maybee, dancing up and down on the doorstep.
“How _do_ you suppose they’ll behave?” said Sue, taking books,
lunch-basket, and two clean pocket-handkerchiefs from mamma’s careful
hands. “Tod is so queer; and what shall I do with Maybee’s tongue?”
“Do exactly as you would be done by,” said mamma, smoothing the anxious
little forehead. “Remember, everything will be new and strange, and
keep the wee things under your own wing as much as possible. Be very
gentle and patient, help them over all the hard places, and my word for
it, they will be your most obedient servants. I think Mabel means to
be very good and quiet,” she added, stooping to kiss the dimpled chin
on the doorstep.
“Yes’m, ’course,” nodded Maybee, skipping away to meet the
freckle-faced Theodore, six months her junior. “On’y my ap’n’s so
slippery it will rattle, and Tod’s got starch in his shoes, so’s he
can’t go very sofferly.”
Sue took Tod’s other hand and walked on in her most matronly manner.
“Good-morning,” said Bell Forbush, coming out of her gate. “You look
for all the world like a hen with two chickens. Don’t tell me those
tots are going to school.”
“Why not? Maybee is six,” returned Sue, dignifiedly, “and Tod wants to
go everywhere she does, so aunty said he might.”
“They’ll be such a bother, only, of course, you can leave them quite by
themselves; they’ll get broken in all the sooner.”
“Mamma expects I’ll take care of them,” said Sue, dropping behind with
Bell.
“Oh, fudge! Grown-up folks never seem to think we need any better fun
than looking after such small fry, when really they ought to wait on
us. In English schools they call them fags, and make them run errands
and everything. Now, take my advice, Sue Sherman: put those young ones
in a front seat, and just let them know who is who to begin with. Fan
is going to bring her croquet this morning.”
Mamma had said, “Be very gentle and patient, help them over the hard
places, and they will be your obedient servants”; but to have them mind
simply because they ought to was a deal easier, and besides, Sue was so
fond of croquet and the children would only be in the way. “You mustn’t
stir one inch till I come back,” she said, lifting the little dumpy
figures into the seat Bell picked out, and running off, mallet in hand.
It just suited Maybee,—the shouting, laughing, and general confusion;
but poor little Tod! He couldn’t hide his face on Maybee’s shoulder
because it would “rumpfle” her “ap’on,” and so he hung his round
flaxen head at a right angle very trying to his bit of a neck. It was
such a relief when a tall, black-whiskered man rang a bell and it grew
suddenly quiet. He liked the singing and reading, and he could even
venture to look around when the hum of study and recitation began.
Maybee, on the contrary, found that dull and tiresome.
But we can’t begin to tell all the day’s trials,—how Maybee crept
away to where Sue and Bell were busy with slates and pencils, and was
picked up by the stern Mr. Blackman and dropped back into her seat as
if she had been a spelling-book, after which Tod didn’t dare wink when
anybody was looking; and how Maybee crawled away again to an empty
seat, and played “keep house” with the peanut-shells, bits of chalk and
crumbs stowed away in the desk; how she meant just to touch her tongue
to the ink-bottle, and tilted it up against her nose and all down the
“slippery” white apron; how Sue gave them their lunch at noon, and
sent them alone to the pump to wash; how Joe Travers sprinkled water
all over them, and Tom Lawrence ran off with the “apple turnovers”;
how somebody called Tod a “toad,” and tried to scrub off his freckles,
and everybody else laughed at the way Maybee’s saucy little tongue
sputtered, and her big black eyes blazed with indignation; how Tod’s
miseries reached a climax, just before school was dismissed, in a
loud outburst of grief, and how Mr. Blackman, with pity in his heart
no doubt, but multiplication and mountains and a million or less of
other matters in his head, laid a huge hand on the little yellow pate,
stopping the flow of tears as suddenly as a patent stop-cock; and how
the tears turned to a big fountain of revenge way down in the angry
little heart, so that when Sue tied on their hats and bade them walk
straight along home, behind Bell and herself, Tod broke out with an
emphatic “You bet! my’ll knock ’ou over.”
“Why, The-od-erer Smith! you wicked boy!” exclaimed Maybee, very much
shocked.
Bell and Sue were already some ways ahead, talking over their new hats.
“All ’em big toads say it,” pouted Tod, “an’ my’s going to gwow till my
can pound ’em heads off.”
Poor little Tod! Both lips and heart blackened with the touch of evil,
so much worse than the dust and ink on Maybee’s white apron.
When the girls stopped at Bell’s gate the little flaxen and brown heads
had both disappeared.
“They’ve lagged behind on purpose. Come in and I’ll show you my new
dress,” said Bell. Then Sue must see it tried on. Of course the
children had gone right along home. Sue wasn’t so sure, but Bell talked
so fast it was half an hour before she could get away.
“They may have gone to aunty’s,” said mamma, looking anxiously up
and down the street, after Sue had stammered out something about
“waiting,” and “supposing,” and “not thinking.”
But they were not at aunty’s, and the two mothers ran here and there,
half wild with fright. Uncle Thed was out of town, but Papa Sherman was
summoned from the bank; and in the gathering twilight, men, women, and
children went hurrying about the village, across the outlying green
fields, into the dark, lonesome woods. Sue, up-stairs, her face buried
in the pillows, sobbed and moaned and listened.
Oh, if she had only kept fast hold of the little hands! if she had only
kissed the tired, dirty little faces! If she had only taken mother’s
advice instead of Bell’s! Such sorrowful “ifs”! And then on her knees
she whispered over and over, “Dear Father in Heaven, if you will only
bring them safe back, I’ll never—never—never forget mother knows
better than all the little girls in the whole world.”
II.
LED INTO SIN—AND OUT.
“And He shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam,
who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.”
Where were Tod and Maybee?
Half-way between the school-house and Bell Forbush’s, a sort of
cart-path led off from the main road into Farmer Grey’s sugar-orchard,
shaded with large, thick-leaved maples, carpeted with soft, green
grass, and spangled with golden dandelions and buttercups.
“Isn’t it nice? S’ouldn’t ’ou like to go down it?” asked Tod, the new,
“starched” shoes feeling, oh, so hot and dusty!
“Yes; but Sue wouldn’t let us,” said matter-of-fact Maybee.
“My don’t care, my _will_!” returned Tod, shaking two soiled fists at
Cousin Sue and her chatty friend. “Let’s wun.”
It was a sudden temptation, and Maybee yielded at once. Hand in hand
they scampered down the cool, shady lane, never once stopping till the
farther side of the orchard was reached. Then, how they rolled and
tumbled in the fresh, green grass! What handfuls of daisies and violets
they picked! and what a dear little brook they found, babbling along
over the stones, and how fast and far they skipped along beside it,
tossing in dandelions to see if the fishes liked butter, and launching
bits of bark loaded with clover blossoms.
“Hello! What’s going on?” cried Dick Vance, the laziest, wickedest boy
in school, now on the way after his father’s cows. Tod recognized one
of his noon-time tormentors, and straightened himself up, muttering,
“My’ll kill you, you bet!” with a furtive glance at Maybee, who was
busy a little ways off, launching a whole fleet of maple-leaves.
“Ho! here’s a man for you,” cried Dick. “Ain’t he a stunner now!
Regular man, he is.”
Tod relaxed a little at the compliment.
“Want me to make you a boat, a real boat with masts?” asked Dick,
dropping down on the ground and opening his knife. Is there any magnet
stronger than a knife to draw little boys to itself? Tod settled down
just a few feet from the new-comer. Dick whittled and talked; Tod edged
nearer and nearer.
“I wouldn’t make boats for many boys,” said Dick, “but you’re ’cute. If
I had a sail, now! Let me have that red pocket-handkerchief of yours.
By thunder! we’ll have a gay one.”
“By funder! my will,” echoed Tod, exactly as Dick meant he should.
Maybee had followed her little fleet quite out of sight. There was no
one but the All-seeing Father up in heaven to hear, and Dick seldom
thought of him; so he went on, saying vulgar, wicked words, and
dreadful oaths, laughing till he had to hold his sides to hear Tod
echo them in his droll baby-fashion. After a while Maybee came hurrying
back into hearing of the low, mean words Dick was rattling off so
glibly. Then she stopped.
“The-od-orer Smith, come right away, quick as ever you can!” she
screamed, with her fingers in both ears. “My mamma says it’s
catching-er than anything.”
Just then down went the sun behind the woods, and a great darkness
settled suddenly around them.
“Who put ve light out?” asked Tod, huskily.
“God,” said Maybee, solemnly; and something in her large black eyes,
uplifted so trustingly, checked the sneering laugh on Dick’s lips and
made him slink quietly away, without even a whistle.
“Now let’s sit down and see God hang the stars out,” said Maybee.
“My don’t like it to be dark,” whined Tod.
“Why, don’t you merember what the verse says,—that one ’bout the
chickens under their mamma’s wing?
“‘Dear little girl, dear little boy,
Afraid of the dark,
Bid your good-night to the daylight with joy,
Be glad of the night; for hark!
The darkness no danger at all can bring,
’Tis only the shadow of God’s kind wing.’
What you s’pose my mamma meant, ’bout Sue’s wing? ’course she
don’t have any, but God does; on’y He’s so big we can’t see Him cover
us all up safe. I like to feel Him though, don’t you?”
“No,” said Tod, “my’s afwaid of bears an’ fings.”
“Pho! it was naughty children the bears in the Bible eat,” returned
Maybee,—which remark was sorry comfort to poor Tod.
“Ma-bel! Ma-a-b-e-ll!” called somebody away off in the distance.
“Oh my! I do b’lieve we’ve forgot to go home,” exclaimed Maybee,
jumping up and pulling Tod in the direction of the voices.
You must imagine all the kissings and huggings, how soundly Tod slept
all night, and how Sue kept pinching Maybee to be sure she was really
there. The saddest thing is yet to be told.
At breakfast next morning Tod used some of the wicked words he had
learned. Oh, how grieved and shocked his mamma was! Tod was positive
he should “never do so any more,” after he had been away with her
up-stairs and asked God to forgive him. But the very next day, although
Sue scarcely left the children a moment, Dick contrived to coax Tod
away, and persuade him it was manly to swagger and swear; and then
Tod kept trying it a little all by himself, and somehow the bad
words would slip out when he didn’t mean them to. Mamma talked and
punished,—little punishments at first; then she tried scrubbing the
inside of his mouth with soap-suds, and twice she shut him up a whole
day, with nothing but bread and water. Still Tod persisted in “talking
big,” as he called it, and at last, with tears in her eyes, mamma gave
him over to Uncle Thed, who took him away into the library, and used a
little stick just as Solomon says we must sometimes. Then he insisted
on a whole long week without any good-night kisses from mamma, which
almost broke poor Tod’s heart.
“My’ll never say ve bad, ugly words adin; my _hates_ ’em!” he broke out
one night, just as mamma was going down-stairs; and this time he kept
his word.
Do you think they were cruel to the little boy? But you know Maybee’s
white apron had to be soaked, and rubbed, and boiled, and bleached,
before it was fit to wear again.
And so, although naughty Dick was sadly to blame, we are sure, when Tod
is a man, he will be thankful for all the suffering which helped take
away the stain of that dreadful sin from his heart and tongue.
III.
NAUGHTY DICK.
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving
and being deceived.”
Whiz went a paper-wad past Ned Holden’s head. He didn’t need to look
up from his Compound Interest to know where it came from: most of the
mischief started with Dick Vance. Little Joe Burns, puzzling over
c-o-u-g-h, b-o-u-g-h, d-o-u-g-h, caught a glimpse of Dick’s eyes
through a pair of green goggles and giggled outright. Sue Sherman
tripped and fell on her way to the grammar class, but the string was
in Dick’s pocket before anybody saw it. But that wasn’t the worst of
it. Wherever Dick was on the playground, there the boys played “for
keeps,” cheated in “tallies,” swore over their quoits, and made ruinous
bargains in jack-knives; and where Dick was, there too were more
than two thirds of the other boys. You can easily guess he wasn’t an
ugly, cross-grained, disobliging fellow. That isn’t the kind of stuff
Satan chooses to make tools of. No one could learn more quickly than
Dick, although he hated study and seldom had a perfect lesson; and a
better-natured, kinder-hearted boy you couldn’t find in that school or
any other. So whatever Dick said “Do,” the others generally did, and
whatever Satan put into Dick’s head was generally the thing to be done.
And Satan was leading him from bad to worse as fast as possible. A year
ago, Dick would have scouted the idea of taking a twenty-five-cent
scrip from Mr. Bower’s money-draw. It began with a few nuts “hooked”
when Mr. Bowers was drawing molasses: it would end—where? Dick never
stopped to think.
The week Tod began going to school, Dick played truant one day. It was
the first time; for the boys, even the scape-grace Dick, stood very
much in awe of Mr. Blackman.
“Won’t you catch it to-morrow?” said they all; but the next morning
Dick walked coolly up to the master’s desk and presented a note of
excuse. And then what a glee he set the boys into, telling how he had
to pretend somebody was driving cows and one ran down a lane, and there
was nobody to help but Dick, although it made him late at school, and
Mr. Blackman would insist on his bringing an excuse. Just a word and
his father’s name would do.
O Dick! You would have scorned that lie a year ago.
But now it seemed quite the thing; and when a large circus was
advertised in an adjoining town, it was an easy matter to persuade, not
only himself but Joe Travers also, there would be some way of getting
round “old Blackman.”
Now, one thing is certain about a circus: there _may_ be lots of good
people there, but there is _sure_ to be plenty of wicked ones, and Dick
very naturally got among them,—fellows who had outgrown marbles and
taken to cards.
Nothing else would have drawn Dick into the low drinking-saloon, or
tempted him to taste the vile stuff sold there. They had a “Band of
Hope” in school, and Dick had always stood by his pledge. But he was
in for a “good time” to-day, and before he knew it had drank enough to
make him reckless and quarrelsome.
Fortunately for Joe, that state of affairs disgusted him and sent him
off home, tired and cross enough to confess anything. Fortunately
or unfortunately for Dick, stumbling over the same ground several
hours later, business had suddenly called his father out of town; his
mother’s thoughts were all on her dairy and kitchen; to-morrow was
Saturday,—no hurry about Mr. Blackman. Dick’s chief concern was how
to keep a promise made his new acquaintances to go gunning the next
Sunday. He had been brought up to respect the Sabbath, outwardly. Mr.
Vance always shaved, put on his best clothes, and read his newspaper.
Dick put on _his_ best clothes and lounged on a sofa over the vilest
trash put up in an illustrated weekly. Mr. Vance didn’t believe in
any kind of religion. Mrs. Vance was always too tired to go to church.
To them, it was man’s day of rest simply, not God’s SUN-day
of light and love and praise. No wonder Dick seldom thought of the
all-seeing Eye, looking straight down into his wicked heart, reading
all his plans.
It was easy enough: wrong-doing so often is. He asked permission to
spend the day at his grandfather’s, some four miles away. He frequently
walked over there on Sunday; and getting an early start before his
father was up he had nothing to do but take down the old gun from the
shed-chamber and stroll away at his leisure. But long before noon
Dick was thoroughly tired of being ordered about, sent to pick up the
game, sworn at for being in the way, in short, of being made to feel
his youngness,—_not_ of the sin, nor of seeing the poor little birds
and bright-eyed squirrels, to whom the sunshine and green trees meant
so much, writhe and gasp, and die in his hand. He determined at last
to strike out for himself in quite a different direction from the
others. Up and down the woods he tramped. All the birds and beasts must
have been taking their noonday nap; Dick grew impatient, and suddenly
brought his gun to the ground, with an oath. There was a loud report, a
stifled scream, and poor Dick lay senseless on the ground.
IV.
THE LITTLE RED HOUSE.
“In famine he shall redeem thee from death, and in war from the
power of the sword.”
Such a funny little clatter! The birds waked up from their afternoon
nap, and half a dozen brown nut-crackers stopped to listen, with one
tooth just inside the tempting white kernel.
“I’m so glad we came home this way,” Maybee chattered on, quite
unconscious of the scores of bright eyes watching her. “Only
look, mamma! I guess here’s where the birdies and butterflies had
their Sabbath School. So many yellow buttercups, just like little
question-books, and daisies and violets for picture-cards; and don’t
that funny little brook sound mos’ like a m’lodeon? Oh, see that birdie
washing his face! How do you s’pose they merember which tree they live
in? I guess their mammas are telling ’em Sunday stories now, they’re
so still. Oh, my pity! Here’s all their dear little water-proofs,”
and down dropped Maybee in a patch of dainty, nodding, pink lady’s
slippers. So many, and such splendid long stems!
“What do you s’pose God made ’em all for?” said Maybee, thoughtfully,
trotting after mamma with both hands full.
“I wonder if old Aunty McFane wouldn’t like a bunch to stand beside her
bed?” smiled mamma.
“May I give her some my own self? ’cause there’s nobody to pick her
any. Mose has to go straight to that rackety old mill soon’s he’s got
breakfast, an’ Peter’s too little. ’Sides, Mose won’t let him go in the
woods, ’cause he’ll get lost. I b’lieve I must run, mamma; I’m in such
a hurry.”
She was back in a trice, however, pale and trembling. Hadn’t mamma
heard something very dreadful? Mamma listened to little faint
twitterings up in the tree-tops,—that was all,—and pinching the
color back into the dimpled cheeks, they walked on, up the path leading
to the low, red house where the McFanes lived.
Little brown sparrow sitting close under the eaves could have told them
what Maybee heard; she had been watching the tumbled, dusty figure
dragging itself slowly and painfully along across the fields from the
woods. Poor Dick! It was such a long way to the little red cottage, and
then when he tried to call somebody, everything grew strange and dark
again; the queer little groan he gave was what Maybee heard. By and by
he opened his eyes, but somehow he didn’t care to move or speak. He
heard little brown sparrow twittering to herself up under the eaves;
he heard the brook gurgling noisily along down in the hollow, and then
he heard voices through the open window,—a thin, piping voice saying,
“But God didn’t send any wavens to bwing it, gwan’ma, as he did to
’lijah.”
“No, deary; grandma didn’t say he would. You see, ma’am, I’ve told him
stories to make him forget like he was hungry, and there’s none like
those in the good Book. O ma’am! there’s nothing like that, and the
harder things are, the tighter you can take hold of the promises. You
mind, ma’am, when that baby was left on my hands an’ me only jest able
to hobble round, and how at last it came to lying here from morning
till night, with only Mose to help, out of mill hours; but that wasn’t
nothing at all to having his work stop entirely, and the little we’d
scraped together go and go, and he a-worrying an’ tryin’ to find
something to do. Five weeks to-morrow! and last Monday we hadn’t a cent
left. He’s tried everywhere for a job; that last tramp over to Luskill
Mills is what ails his feet. Friday morning he couldn’t step a step,
and not a thing in the house but some dry bread. We’ve never trusted
Peter alone, so he dars’n’t go as far as the main road, an’ we’re quite
a ways off of the path, even. But I knew the Lord could send somebody.
He does hear when folks pray. Don’t you see, Peter, instead of the
ravens he sent the kind lady?”
“We come home this way ’cause it was so hot,” put in Maybee; “but I do
b’lieve He let Sue come tagging after, so’s mamma could send her home
quick to bring you some supper, and p’raps He just made those flowers
a-purpose; you know he sees to the sparrows.”
“Does He really?” thought Dick, looking up at the nest over his head.
“I wish—but I suppose He knows how wicked I’ve been, and won’t care. I
wonder if that’s Sue?”
A light, quick step went up the walk, followed by a scream of delight.
“You must excuse the little fellow, ma’am; he’s so ravenous,” said a
man’s voice, and it trembled too. Dick wondered if he was crying. Then
he heard the rattle of dishes and the hum of the tea-kettle, and by and
by a pleasant voice bidding Sue run back and ask Dr. Helps to come and
look at Moses’ feet.
“You won’t disbelieve again, will ye, Moses?” said the grandmother.
“You see, ma’am, he couldn’t just believe God cared anything about us,
and it’s dreadful to be in the dark and not feel sure there’s an Eye
seeing the end from the beginning all along, and a Hand ready to help
as soon as ever the right time comes.”
“I wonder if He saw me down in the woods,” thought Dick, dreamily, the
voices sounding farther and farther away. “What was it grandpa used to
tell me,—‘Remember the Sabbath day’; but I didn’t _forget_ it; I never
cared. I wish He wouldn’t look way down in my heart; it’s such a great
Eye, and it sees all the bad. Oh, how bright it is, and it hurts so! If
He only would go away!”
But the sun, which Dick fancied was the great all-seeing Eye, shone
steadily down on the poor, pinched white face, and the voices inside
went on:—
“It doesn’t seem, gran’mother, as if such a great Being could care for
poor, wicked creatures like us.”
“He made the littlest flower, Moses, as well as the great mountains;
and as for the wickedness, didn’t he let his own dear Son die just for
us?”
“O me! I do b’le’ve I’m going to cry,” said Maybee, slipping past the
doctor and around the corner of the house, full upon Dick, lying still
and white, with a wild, staring look in his eyes.
Her screams summoned mamma and the doctor, who together carried him
into the one front room of the cottage, and laid him on the “spare
bed,” clean and white, if Mose had been sole housekeeper for many
months.
“He mustn’t be moved again,” the doctor said; but “they could bring
whatever they pleased to the cottage,” he added,—a hint Dick’s
father wasn’t slow to take, for besides idolizing his boy, he was a
kind-hearted man, and fairly shuddered when Maybee’s mamma told him how
nearly starvation had come to the little red house.
Dick knew nobody that night nor for many days; but the sun, as it
peeped in morning after morning, and crept reluctantly away at night,
found out two things,—that Dick’s mother loved her boy better than
her dairy, and that little Peter was growing fat and rosy on something
besides “dry bread.”
V.
“DOT.”
“And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall
trouble thee this day.”
Dick opened his eyes one morning and began to wonder where he was.
It seemed as if he had been sailing over mountain-tops and crawling
about underground for years. And now, could anybody tell where he had
waked up? It wasn’t like any room at the farm-house,—the white-washed
walls, smoky ceiling, and bare floor. Such funny red posts to the
bedstead, and a big, clumsy red chest under the window! On the chest
were tumblers and bottles, and beside it, in a creaky wooden chair, sat
a fat, jolly-looking woman, rocking away as if she had nothing else in
the world to do. Where had Dick seen her before? Oh, he remembered!
she came to their house when his mother had the fever last fall.
Through an open door he could see a cooking-stove, a little red-haired,
red-stockinged boy, playing with a Noah’s Ark, and another bed, with
such a pleasant old lady’s face on the pillow,—such a happy, smiling
face,—and a thin, wrinkled hand stroking lovingly a bunch of dry,
faded flowers on the stand close by.
While he was watching her, somebody leaned over and kissed him. Dick’s
eyes filled with tears, but he knew his mother through them. Only it
was so queer for her to kiss him. He could just remember her doing it
when he wore dresses, like the little red-haired boy. Since then she
had been too busy; she always praised him when he ran errands promptly;
she laughed at his jokes and tricks, kept his clothes clean and
whole, and made him no end of pies and cakes. Indeed, she was always
baking, brewing, churning, sweeping, dusting, mending, or sleeping.
She came around the bed now, with a bright little porringer in her
hand, gave him something nice to swallow, tucked the clothes around
his shoulders, and told him to lie still. He shut his eyes, and was
sound asleep before he knew it. When he opened them again the nurse
was nodding in her chair, the tea-kettle singing on the stove, and
the pleasant-faced old woman sat bolstered up in bed, with the little
red-haired boy and our old friends, Maybee and Tod, curled up on the
foot, listening with all their eyes and ears. So Dick listened too.
“You see we can’t do wrong,” she was saying, “without troubling
somebody else, like the little black-and-white rabbit, you know.”
Peter nodded “Yes.” “No; what was it?” said Tod.
“Why, once there was a little black-and-white rabbit named Dot. He
lived with his mother and sisters in a nice little house, in a nice
large yard full of green grass. But he was always fretting and whining
to get out and hop about the lawn and garden. He liked to nibble the
trees and the tender green sauce. ‘Which is exactly what master says
you mustn’t do,’ said his mother. ‘He’s mean,’ snarled Dot. ‘No, he
isn’t; he gives you plenty to eat that’s nice, and besides, he says
there are cruel boys and dogs outside. I advise you to listen to him,’
and Mrs. Bunny took a mouthful of fresh clover. ‘I’ll risk ’em,’
muttered Dot, digging away at the palings till he found a hole big
enough to crawl through. ‘I wish you’d show me where the garden is,’ he
asked the first boy he met. ‘To be sure. Perhaps you’d like me to carry
you?’
“Dot was lazy and forgot all his mother’s warnings. He had a most
delightsome ride, but, oh dear! at the end he found himself shoved,
head first, into a low, dark box, with hardly room enough to turn
around. There he stayed pretty nigh a week, with nothing to eat but
coarse hay. His new friend tormented him almost to death, pulling his
ears, pinching his nose, and punching him with sharp sticks, and at
last he grew so thin he managed to squeeze through between his prison
bars. Good or bad luck led him straight into a most beautiful garden,
with beds of beets, turnips, radishes, celery, lettuce, everything
tender and sweet as sunshine and dew could make it. He ate so much
he could scarcely stir, and was just about to curl down under a
currant-bush for a quiet snooze when a big man began pelting him with
stones. Poor Dot! limping and panting he tried to find the gate, but
had finally to crawl under a stone wall. He slept there that night, and
didn’t dare even to stick his nose out the next morning till he was so
hungry he couldn’t wait another moment. There was a nice clover-field
close by, but he had hardly taken a nibble when up ran a big black
dog, growling and barking, and there would have been an end of Dot but
for a blackberry thicket. He dived into that, and Bose had too much
regard for his sleek, fat sides to follow. Every few minutes, however,
he would come capering back, and set Dot’s heart beating so he was
sure it would come out of his mouth. Not for hours did he dare venture
out, all bleeding and dirty, the forlornest looking creature you ever
saw. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He was real thankful to see the
white palings of his old home just ahead, but instead of going straight
there, naughty Dot concluded to take a final stroll across the lawn and
taste of the young fruit-trees in the orchard. It was an unfortunate
time, for Harry’s papa—Harry was Dot’s little master—had just started
to drive down the carriage-way, and Billy, although a very discreet old
horse, was nevertheless woefully afraid of anything white. He shied
suddenly at sight of Dot, overturned the buggy, and left poor Mr. Wells
lying on the ground with three broken ribs.
“‘Such a bad, ungrateful, disobedient rabbit!’ groaned old Mrs. Bunny,
when Dot at last crept back through the same hole he went out of. ‘See
how much trouble you’ve made! Poor old Jones was depending on his
garden-sauce to pay his rent; that Joe Barker got whipped for being
late at school three mornings; and here’s master laid up for nobody
knows how long.’
“‘Nobody knows the trouble _I’ve_ had,’ grumbled Dot, snatching at the
fresh, sweet clover. ‘How could I know whose garden ’twas, or imagine
that great horse so silly as to jump at poor little me?’
“‘You couldn’t,’ returned his mother, gravely. ‘You aren’t old or wise
enough. That’s why we need a Master to tell us just what to do. You
see, things are all joined together somehow, and doing just one wrong
thing is sure to make no end of a bother. Mark my word, there’s nothing
like having a good master, and doing exactly as he says. If you don’t,
there’ll be trouble all round, depend upon it.”
VI.
CHOOSING A MASTER.
“And Elijah said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the
Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him.”
Dick found lying still from morning till night very dull and tiresome.
Mose was at work again, and as the good-natured nurse took upon herself
the general house-work, which Mose had managed for more than a year
under his grandmother’s direction, Dick was necessarily left alone a
good part of the time. It was quite a relief when little Peter was
allowed to scramble over the bed, asking questions by the score; still
more delightful was it to be bolstered up in the big wooden rocker
and drawn out into the cheery little kitchen beside cheery old Aunty
McFane, who knew exactly the kind of bear stories boys like best to
hear. It seemed a little strange nothing was said about his going
home, and that lately his mother had so seldom come to see him.
One day when nurse had gone out to gossip with some of the neighbors,
Dick’s patience gave way, and he broke out, with an oath,—
“Great deal folks care for a fellow,—not to come nigh him for most
a week! Shut up in this hole, kept on slops, and the doctor running
knives into you when he takes a notion.” Another oath finished the
sentence.
“Didn’t you know, haven’t they told you your mother was sick?” said
Aunty McFane, gravely.
Dick leaned back among his pillows, white and trembling.
“How—why—what made her sick?” he stammered.
“She jest overdone, tending to her work and looking after you; and
one day, when you was the worst, she came in the rain and got chilled
through. She’s never been well sence, but she kept up till last week.
She was better yesterday. I don’t think God means to take her from you
just yet.”
Dick looked steadily at the old clock; the little mouse nibbling away
in the pantry stopped to hear how loud it ticked through the stillness.
“It’s like the little black-and-white rabbit,—all comes of my going
to the —— circus,” said Dick at length, with another oath. He didn’t
mean to add that: it slipped out before he thought.
“Yes, it _is_ like. Folks, as well as rabbits, need a good and wise
Master,” said Aunty McFane, very soberly. “Do you know who is your
master, Dicky?”
Dick moved uneasily. Ever since the day he was hurt, that great,
all-seeing Eye had seemed to be looking straight into his naughty
heart, and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
“I—suppose—it’s—God, if He’s everybody’s,” he said, in a low voice.
“Oh no! God hasn’t any servants only those who choose to obey him. It
was Satan who told you to go to the circus, and coaxed you off gunning
on the Sabbath, and put those dreadful words in your mouth just now.
God’s commandments are very different. You know what they are, of
course, Dicky?”
“The ten commandments? Grandpa used to tell me, but I—why, I keep most
all of them, I guess. I don’t make ‘graven images.’”
“I don’t suppose you do yet, sonny, as the men do who worship their
big stores and houses; but if we love anything better than we love
God, it’s an idol, an’ I’m afraid you’ve got one idol named Self. And
then there’s ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in
vain,’”—Dick dropped his head,—“and this, ‘Remember the Sabbath day
to keep it holy.’”
A little lower drooped the red face.
“Honor thy father and mother.”
“I’m all right there,” cried Dick, suddenly straightening. “I never
call my father the ‘old man,’ as some boys do, nor make as if I was too
big to mind mother.”
“I’m glad of it, Dick; I hope you can plead ‘Not guilty’ to all the
rest; only remember Jesus said, ‘Whoso hateth his brother is a
murderer.’ And then there’s the ‘new commandment’ Christ gave us, ‘Love
one another.’”
“There’s—I—you know, the other one, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ and I—I
have taken things, little things, sometimes,” said Dick, hurriedly.
“O Dicky Vance! To think Satan could make a brave, kind-hearted boy
like you into a thief. How does he pay you? By making you real happy
and giving you lots of fun? At the circus the other day, for instance.”
“I should have had a good time if I hadn’t got in with those fellows.”
“But it’s just ‘those fellows’ Satan will always keep you with.”
“We had a tip-top time the other day; we played truant,” said Dick,
eagerly. “We went fishing away up by the Crossing, and there didn’t a
single bad thing happen. I don’t like stories where every bad boy gets
drowned or something.”
“Nor I, either; but did you feel all right? Didn’t you have to keep
looking round to see if anybody was coming, and go ever so far out of
your way for fear of meeting some one?”
“Why, how did you know?” exclaimed Dick, in surprise.
“I didn’t; I only know it’s the way Satan’s servants mostly do. I
shouldn’t think a boy like you would fancy that,—sneakin’ round,
afraid to look in folks’ faces. Now, ain’t you ten times happier the
days you learn all your lessons and mind the rules, than you was then?”
“I don’t try that often enough to know,” said Dick, laughing and
coloring at the same time. “I’ve thought more’n once I _would_ turn
square round and keep right up to the mark; but it’s a plaguy bother to
toe a straight crack.”
“Now, take my word, Dick, it isn’t half so hard as ’tis to toe Satan’s
crooked ones; and besides, _my_ Master helps his servants; he don’t
call them servants, he calls them children. Only think! the great God,
who made heaven and earth, letting us call him Father, hearing us when
we pray, and promising to help us over all the hard places. Why, Dick,
he would even help you get your lessons.”
Dick shook his head unbelievingly.
“But I’ve tried him,” continued Aunty McFane, earnestly. “I’ve tried
him more than fifty years. He says he numbers the hairs of our heads,
and there can’t be anything littler than that. And then he sent his
only Son to die for us. We hadn’t done as the Master, who knew better
than we, had told us to do, and so Jesus came to ‘save us’ from our
sins. Does your master make any such way for you out of trouble? Which
do you think is the best one to follow, Dick? because you can’t serve
both; you must choose.”
Dick made no reply, and Aunty McFane, too wise to spoil what she had
said by saying too much, closed her eyes as if to sleep. I think,
way down in her heart, she was asking God to bless the poor boy and
help him to choose then. By and by, laying one hand suddenly on his
shoulder, she quietly said, “What would have become of you, Dick, if
God hadn’t sent little Maybee here that day?”
Dick buried his face in his pillows and burst into tears.
VII.
TOD’S STRATAGEM.
“The God that answereth by fire, let him be God.”
“Come here, you little toad! Before I would play girl-plays the
whole time!” cried Joe Travers, one of the big boys, to our little
friend Tod, who was running as mail-agent between two of the pretty
play-houses under the old oak.
Tod dropped the brown paper mail-bag as if it had burned him, and
looked around. Maybee’s sharp little tongue was buzzing away in the
farthest corner of the playground. Sue was busily “setting table.”
“Come over here, and we’ll have some jolly witch stories,” called Joe,
persuasively; and over went Tod, leaving the poor mail bag, containing
Sue’s invitation to a “kettledrum,” and Bell’s telegram for rooms
at the Polygon Hotel, soaking in a little pool of water left from
yesterday’s rain.
Tod had become a general favorite with both boys and girls. His shyness
led him to choose the latter; but the boys, having discovered his
fondness for “horrifying stories,” liked nothing better than to get
him away by himself, and manufacture the most frightful tales possible
on purpose to see the big blue eyes open to their widest extent, not
caring a straw that they resolutely refused to shut at night unless
mother was close by. To-day, however, Joe had only a simple witch
story, about a little boy, stolen from his parents and brought up in
a hovel, but finally rescued by the witch and restored to his real
father, who lived in a splendid palace, etc. etc.
“Guess, then, him had bus’els of choc’late ca’mels, and riding-horses,”
said Tod, smacking his lips.
“Don’t you wish you was that little boy?” put in Tom Lawrence, rather
disappointed that Joe’s story was no more exciting.
“Well, but I know something,” said Joe, with a wink at the other boys.
“I met an old woman this morning, an’ she told me—”
“What?” cried a dozen voices.
“Well, suppose Mr. Smith wasn’t Tod’s father.”
“My sha’n’t!” said Tod.
“Oh! you needn’t unless you want to; only if ’Squire Ellis was _my_
father, and I could live in that big house on the hill, and have a pony
and a dog and a gun and all sorts of things—”
“Did—she—say—my papa—was that great, big man with a cane what
keeps that great big store an’ wides two horses to once?” asked Tod,
excitedly.
“Oh, I can’t tell you any more, you’ll have to find out yourself,”
returned Joe, very sure an idea, once lodged under the flaxen curls,
would never lie still.
All the afternoon Tod thought it over. Every morning, of late, he had
lingered in front of a new _café_, looking longingly at the snowy
_méringues_, set off by dark, rich chocolate-browns. His sweet-tooth
was one of Tod’s weakest points, and for that reason Papa Smith rather
limited his supply of pocket-money, and seldom fished anything less
harmless than peppermints out of his own pockets. Tod supposed it was
simply from lack of means. Esq. Ellis, now, “could just buy that safe
man out if he wanted to.”
“P-i-g, ponies,” spelled Tod, with such a grand plan in his head he
could think of nothing else. When school was out he privately invited
Maybee to a picnic in the grape-arbor at six that evening, and then,
under pretence of going round by his father’s shop, set off alone up
the main street. Straight into the big store he marched. Esq. Ellis was
busily talking with a couple of men. Tod had been taught manners, and
waited patiently beside him till the gentlemen turned to go, then he
began: “Please will you—”
“Carter wants that order filled before six o’clock,” said a clerk
coming up in the opposite direction.
Tod clutched at the broadcloth coat:—
“_If_ you please—ice-cream an’ ca’mels,—they’re so jolly; an’ if—you
know—I’m your little boy—couldn’t you just give me fifty cents right
straight off, please? My wants it the very worse kind.”
The busy merchant glanced down into the earnest little face; the clerk
touched his arm; he turned quickly.
“The impudence of these beggars! Scott, I thought I told you not to
allow them inside. Is that bill made out for Edson & Dodge? And don’t
forget Dorr is to have samples at once. How about Carter now?” and he
hurried away.
Tod walked dejectedly to the door, his little heart swelling with grief
at that horrid, _horrid_ word “beggar.” What if his face and hands
were grimy and his apron torn? “My guesses,—’t any rate, my’ll try
the other one,” and off he flew up the street, around the corner, into
his father’s office. Papa was there, talking to a man of course. Tod
slipped one grimy hand into his and waited, choking back the grief that
would keep the red lips in a quiver. And the moment the man was fairly
gone, he sobbed out,—
“Please, papa, won’t you? it’s so jolly! Just fifty cents for ice-cream
and ca’mels. My wanted a party so bad! but he wouldn’t, an’ she’s
coming, you know.”
“If you please, sir, Thorpe is waiting to know about that No. 7,” said
somebody in a white paper cap.
“In a moment, John,” said Mr. Smith, sitting down in his chair and
taking Tod in his arms. “Now, papa’s little man, what is the matter?”
“Just fifty cents, please, papa, for Maybee and me to buy choc’late. My
wants it so bad, papa,—jus’ the worst kind.”
“Dear me, that’s _very_ bad, isn’t it? and Sweet-tooth has been very
patient of late, to be sure. So Maybee is coming to a party! Well,
well, there’s a bright, new, silver half-dollar. How’ll that do?
because papa’s in a dreadful hurry.”
Nose, chin, whiskers and all,—how Tod covered them with kisses,
squeezing his “own-y to-ny papa” tight as two little arms could.
“Guess my knew how to find out certain true,” he said, sitting with
Maybee under the grape-arbor half an hour later, both faces well
plastered with chocolate. “Guess the _own_ papas see through a hurry,
quick ’nough, when my asks ’em weal hard.”
VIII.
THE HELPING HAND.
“Will He plead against me with _his_ great power? No; but he
would put _strength_ in me.”
When Dick came back to school you would scarcely have known him, he had
grown so tall and stout. The younger boys looked up at him admiringly;
the older ones held a little aloof.
It wasn’t at all the Dick who ran away to visit the circus a few months
before. In the first place, this Dick was a travelled youth. As soon as
his mother was able to ride out, the doctor had ordered them both up
among the mountains to try what the clear, bracing air would do to mend
matters. It was up there in a little nook among the rocks, with only a
bit of blue sky looking in between the tall trees, his mother, with one
hand laid lovingly upon his shoulder, had told him how sorry she was
she had all these years been too busy to love and serve the kind Father
above, who had spared their lives and given them so many blessings, and
how she meant now to try and please Him first of all. Dick was very
sure he meant to be a better boy, but he didn’t care to think much
about God. Of course he could be good just as well. So this Dick went
to church and Sabbath School; this Dick was trying not to swear, and no
longer loafed about the street-corners and saloon-steps.
The boys had an idea it would be a very sober, stiff old Dick, but
they soon found out their mistake. He was as full of fun as ever, only
now he tried to keep it for playtimes. Study, however, was uphill
work; he had been idle so long, and there were plenty of boys ready to
laugh at his blunders, to tempt him into some sly fun, and especially
to report every time he swore or broke a rule. Mr. Blackman, too,
remembering the old Dick, was forever accusing him of this, that, and
the other bit of mischief. Poor man! Wasn’t he tried almost out of his
life with the care of so much perpetual motion, and hadn’t Dick always
been the most troublesome screw in the machinery? And wasn’t it the
most natural thing in the world, when anything went wrong, to give that
the first twist?
The brook, beside which Dick gave Tod his first lesson in swearing, ran
through a large field not far from the school-house. There the boys
went to drill, to fly their kites, and to play base-ball. The brook was
much wider there, with a high, steep bank on either side, and of late
the boys had taken to walking across on the narrowest plank possible,
balancing on one foot in the middle, turning somersaults, and otherwise
imitating Blondin at Niagara. The water was shallow and the bottom
sandy, so their frequent tumbles resulted in nothing worse than a
wetting.
One day, as Tod stood by in open-mouthed astonishment at their
performances, it occurred to Tom Lawrence what fun it would be to make
the little fellow walk across.
“My couldn’t,” said Tod, his teeth chattering at the bare suggestion.
“Oh yes, you can,” joined in half a dozen boys, ready, as boys too
often are, for any fun, no matter at whose expense. “Quick, now, or
we’ll duck you!”
“Here comes Dick Vance; he’ll send him over quicker’n lightning,”
cried Joe Travers.
Tod looked around at the tall, stout figure leaping the wall; almost a
man, Dick seemed to him. Poor little Tod! he felt his doom was sealed,
and trembled to the tips of his shiny shoes.
The boys crowded up, shouting, laughing.
“Make him go over there? Of course I can;” and Dick, swinging the
little fellow upon one shoulder, bounded over the narrow plank before
anybody had time to think.
The boys cheered lustily; boys are never slow to appreciate a daring
deed. But “It isn’t fair!” “No play!” followed close upon the cheer.
“You’ll have to do it, Chicken Little, or they’ll make a prodigious
row,” said Dick. “Look here, now. I’ll hold one hand all ready to catch
you, and promise, sure as I live, you sha’n’t fall; and do you trot
straight along without thinking anything about it. Why, it’s just as
easy,—with me, you know.”
“You bet! By funder!” rejoined Tod, with a sudden explosion of bravery.
“Don’t let’s say that sort of words any more,” said Dick, looking
ashamed and sorry. “Let’s just say we’ll try.”
“My _will_,” responded Tod, confidently, trudging on without looking to
right or left. “My _can_ do it, ’cause your hand is so big.”