thee,’ and dismiss our meeting.”
While they were putting back the chairs Maybee told her mother what
Miss Marvin had said about the stepping-stones, and how it must have
been Uncle Thed and Tod, because she saw Uncle Thed hug Tod to-day
when he told about them.
“Don’t you s’pose,” said Maybee thoughtfully, “that’s why God has
stepping-stones up to heaven ’stead of a plank walk?”
PART SECOND.
I.
BETTER THAN “A RICH COUSIN.”
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye,
always having all sufficiency in all _things_, may abound to
every good work.”
Miss Cox had found a destitute family down by the Mills, and enlisted
the girls of her Sabbath School class to provide suitable clothing, in
which the children could come to church.
They were to meet at her house Saturday afternoon to sew, having, the
Sabbath before, brought what money they could to purchase material.
Bell Forbush had given a whole dollar, while poor Sarah Ellis shook her
head sorrowfully when asked for her mite.
“But you will come and sew, and that will do just as well,” said Miss
Cox, putting down twenty-five cents for Sue Sherman.
“I gave every bit of my pocket-money,” whispered Bell to Sue; “but, you
see, Cousin Mate will give me some more if I just ask her; for, don’t
you think, she’s going to stay all summer, and she has such lots of
money she’s always giving me some.”
Sue was more than half inclined to envy Bell this stroke of good luck
in the shape of a rich cousin. She quite envied her the next Saturday
afternoon. It sounded so grand for Bell to say whenever anything was
found to be lacking, “O Miss Cox! I will give that. I’ll run right over
to the store this minute.”
Buttons, trimmings, handkerchiefs, hair-ribbons, even,—“I had no idea
we should make out such complete outfits, and so pretty,” said Miss
Cox, “and we shouldn’t but for you, Bell.”
“Bell will certainly become bankrupt if she keeps on,” said Jenny King.
“Not while she has a rich cousin to go to,” said Nettie Rand, in her
provoking way.
Bell colored, but had the readiness to say frankly, “that’s the secret
of it. Cousin Mate wants me to be benevolent, and has promised to find
all the money I need.”
“Great way of being benevolent, that is!” said Nettie, tossing her head.
“It’s doing good just the same,” rejoined Sue, standing up for her
friend, “only it must be real nice and easy to know whatever you want
is to be had just for the asking.”
Say Ellis looked up with a bright smile, but she said nothing.
“We are very much obliged to Miss Marvin and to Bell too,” remarked
Miss Cox, basting away on the last little sacque. “The younger ones
are all provided for now, but there’s an older girl. I can’t even get
a chance to speak to her yet; folks say she’s a wild, high-flyer of
a thing, with an ugly temper, and that she uses dreadful language. I
don’t know as we can do anything—”
“Oh! that Tryphosa Harte,” interrupted Nettie. “She’s perfectly horrid.
It’s that girl who stood on the steps and mimicked us, the other night,
Bell.”
“She’s just about your size, isn’t she?” resumed Miss Cox; “and I was
thinking, if each of you should give her something of your own,—things
you had done wearing of course, but tasty and like other people’s,
dress her up real pretty, you know,—and all take some sort of interest
in her, we might get her into Sabbath School and help her be somebody.
They say she’s uncommonly smart.”
“But, Miss Cox, she makes all manner of fun of anything good. I’ll ask
mother to give her my last summer’s sacque, but I shouldn’t dare speak
to her,” exclaimed Sue.
“I could give her one of my cambric dresses and I dare say Cousin Mate
would get her a hat, but she’s so disagreeable I never want to go near
her,” said Bell.
“It wouldn’t be a bit of use, I know,” put in Nettie Rand. “She’d only
laugh in our faces the minute we said Sabbath School to her; and I
think it’s hard work enough to ask folks to be good when they treat you
decent. I dare say father would give her a pair of shoes, but they’d
never walk into church, I’m sure of that.”
“I should call it casting pearls before swine,” laughed Jenny King.
“Please, Miss Cox, don’t set us to driving any but _little_ pigs
into Sabbath School: you can coax round them easy, but that Tryphosa
Harte,—it would take the meekness of Moses to begin with, and
the patience of Job to hold out. I know meekness and patience and
perseverance are nice things to have, but, you see, none of us has a
rich cousin to keep us supplied with that sort of pocket-money.”
Again Say Ellis looked up, with a flash of sunshine in her mild, blue
eyes, and this time she spoke:—
“I’d like—to try, Miss Cox. I never spoke to her but once, and then
she threw mud at me, but I could—try; and I’d like—to give something.
Would a pair of stockings—”
“Yes, indeed; she’ll need everything, I suppose,” said Miss Cox warmly.
“If you _would_ try, Sarah dear. I have an idea one of you would
succeed much better than I.”
“Whatever did you offer for?” asked Jenny King, as she and Sarah walked
home together. “It will be just a waste of kindness.”
“But if there’s plenty more to be had, we needn’t mind,” said Say,
smiling.
Jenny stared, and then said slowly, “But I do mind having a dirty,
ragged thing like that turn up her nose at me. You just try how it
feels a few times, and—”
“But don’t you know—I was thinking—I’m sure it’s something like,”
stammered Say.
“What _are_ you getting at?” laughed Jenny good-naturedly, as they
stopped before the gate of the small cottage where Sarah lived.
“Why, you said we hadn’t any rich cousin to give us patience and
meekness, and I thought, wasn’t God a great deal better, because, you
know, it was in our Sabbath School lesson,—Whatsoever we ask, He can
give it to us. Only think,—_whatsoever_!”
“Yes, but I never thought of taking it so, really.”
“_I_ thought of it when Sue said it must be nice to know we could have
anything we wanted. You see, I couldn’t give any money, because mother
has to work so hard, and I wondered supposing I had and asked God to
make it up, if he would. And when it came to doing something, I was
sure he’d help if we all prayed. I wanted to ask the girls to, but I
didn’t quite dare.”
“Isn’t it queer,” said Jenny thoughtfully, “how afraid we are to talk
about such things to each other? Now, we asked Bell to ask her cousin
for a dozen things, and it isn’t so very different asking God, only
that he’s so great.”
“Which makes it so much the better, and he has—different things, you
know, patience, and love.”
“Oh dear! it’s such hard work to use those things, I’m afraid I don’t
want them much,” sighed Jenny; “but I’ll pray about Tryphosa. I begin
to pity her more already.”
“Going to give away your stockings!” exclaimed Tilly Ellis, Sarah’s
little sister, that night, as the latter was looking over her one small
drawer of underclothing. Neat, and whole, and enough, but very little
to spare: that told the whole story at the Ellis’s.
“Yes, Tilly; you know God wants us to do good, and he’s promised to
give us everything we need, and I think he’ll show me how I can earn
some more. I’m going to try it anyway, because if I didn’t give her
something, she wouldn’t know I really wanted to help her.”
Tilly was too sleepy to ask who “her” was; and the next thing either
of them knew, it was the Sabbath morning, and the birds were holding a
praise-meeting under their chamber-window.
II.
TRYPHOSA.
“Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great _is_ thy
faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was
made whole from that very hour.”
All Say’s attempts the next week to make Miss Tryphosa’s acquaintance
were unsuccessful. Once a small boy directed her to the wrong street;
once a drunken man reeled against her on the narrow side-walk, and
frightened her back; another time, the door was locked. At last,
however, she gained admittance, having been vociferously welcomed at
the gate by all the younger children. Mrs. Harte set her a chair,
remarked, “Tryphosy was som’eres round,” and went back to her wash-tub.
Say did her best with “the weather,” the “health of the family,” and
“the hard times.” “Yes” and “No” was all the help she had. The room
was hot and close with steam from the “suds,” the stove smoked, the
children fingered her from top to toe, and after waiting nearly an hour
she was glad to make her escape.
“Call again. See you any time!” sounded from somewhere in mid-air as
she went down the rickety steps. She looked up, and from amongst the
woodbine which ran all over the roof of the old house recognized the
face she was in pursuit of.
“Oh, please, are you Tryphosa? Do come down! I want to see you very
much,” she said earnestly.
“Catch a weasel asleep!” “Does your mother know you’re out?” “Ain’t we
fine!” and then followed a string of oaths which made poor Say cover
her ears and hurry home as fast as she could.
She had no idea of giving it up, however.
In one corner of the yard, right amongst the thistles and bitter weeds,
she had noticed a little patch of fresh earth, where had been set a
bunch of columbine, two tiger-lilies, a scraggly rose-bush, and one
bright, pert, little pansy. On the Sabbath she asked the children
whose it was.
“Oh! that Phosy’s,” they said. “She thinks a sight of that garding.
Wasn’t she hoppin’ mad last night, ’cause pa pulled up the holly-hocks
Bill Finnegan had just bringed her!” Bill worked at the Squire’s, where
they “had posies as _was_ posies.”
Early Monday morning Say took up her one pet scarlet geranium. There
were half a dozen others, but none so full of buds, none she had so
closely watched from the first slipping. She didn’t even wait to eat
her breakfast, for fear of missing Tryphosa.
“Here, let alone! What you after now?” called out the same coarse
voice, from up in the woodbine, as Say stooped over the forlorn little
flower-bed, transplanting her geranium.
“I’ve brought something for you. Come and see if you like it,” said
Say, without raising her eyes.
A rumble, tumble, thump,—and the weird, wicked-looking face was
thrust close to her own. “What’d you bring it for?”
“Because it was so pretty I wanted you to have it,” returned Say,
pressing the earth firmly around the roots.
“Don’t tell me! You’ve got an axe to grind,” said the girl, a smile
lurking around the full, red lips and dull, dark eyes in spite of her
frown.
“No, I haven’t; that is, I _do_ want something, but it’s something
you’ll like. We thought—we want ever so much that you should come to
Sabbath School.”
“I’d look well, wouldn’t I?” and Tryphosa, who had leaned over to
finger the bright, scarlet blossoms, straightened herself, and glanced
down defiantly at her ragged dress and bare feet.
“No, we’ve some real nice clothes, our very own; you’re just as big as
we, and if you’ll come——”
“Well, I ain’t a going to. ‘Betty, put the kettle on,’” and away went
Tryphosa, to reappear in a moment on the roof among the woodbine,
where she sang and shouted till Say had turned the farthest corner.
Say went to bed that night utterly discouraged, but the next morning
she was bright and hopeful as ever. Was it because she so earnestly
asked the Father to give her, out of his abundance, more patience and
perseverance?
Wednesday night, slipping one of her two pairs of pretty striped
balmorals into her pocket, she started slowly towards the mills again,
dreading the interview in spite of herself, and passing and repassing
the rickety old steps several times before she could make up her mind
what to say first.
“Want to see how it’s growed?” and Tryphosa suddenly bounced out of the
door, bringing up on the grass beside her flower-bed. “It’s just jolly!
but I don’t believe yer care any great shakes about my going to that
there place.”
“Oh! but I do, really; we want you to come very much, Miss Cox and all;
and we have such nice times, and we sing,” said Sarah, stepping inside
the gate.
“Well, fetch on yer clothes an’ I’ll see.”
“Oh! but couldn’t you come to my house Sunday morning? Miss Cox
thought—”
“Oh, ho! ye ain’t going to give me the duds, only fix a fellow up for
the show. Much obleeged, but that don’t go down, not by a jugful!”
“No, oh! no,” began Say earnestly; “but wouldn’t you _rather_ come to
my house and let me braid your hair just like mine, you know, and have
mother fix in a ruffle and—and a ribbon?”
Something kept suggesting just the right thing to our Say.
“And see here,” she added, pulling out the balmorals, striped brown
and gray with just a thread of scarlet, “I’ve brought these because
I thought you’d like to be sure. They’re for your very own, and I’ll
bring the shoes to-morrow.”
The dull eyes fairly glistened and the rough, tanned cheeks dimpled
under the frowning eye-brows. “Well, hand ’em over. I’ll be there. No,
come to think, I was going after blackberries Sunday. You’ll have to
wait a week, unless,” and the eyes snapped maliciously, “you could come
to the factory and help awhile Saturday afternoon, so’s I could get out
earlier.”
The dirty old factory! But Say hesitated only a moment. “Yes, I’ll do
that if you’ll promise sure.”
“Sure it is!” and Tryphosa held out a dirty brown hand; “but you don’t
mean it; you’re only foolin’.”
Say’s mother might have to sew very hard for a living, but it was very
different from taking in washing and having a drunken husband to worse
than waste the greater part of his own and the others’ earnings. Say
was very different from the factory girls. Phosy could see that.
“But I do mean it,” said Say, shaking the soiled hand so heartily
Tryphosa actually grinned with delight.
There was a whole suit ready Saturday night. Miss Cox attended to that,
and Say was on hand in the afternoon. The girls said it was a shame
and pitied her dreadfully, but never once thought of offering to go
with her to the “horrid old mill.” And oh, how hateful Tryphosa was!
She introduced Say to the mill-girls as “Sister Sainty,” kept them in
a roar over her probable exploits in the Sabbath-School line, and held
Say in suspense with a dread of impossible accidents.
But she made her appearance, bright and early, Sabbath morning,
comparatively quite docile, submitted to be washed, shampooed, braided,
and ruffled, with a most martyr-like air, and came out from the process
not so very unlike the five other girls, among whom Say seated her,
with such a happy look in her own blue eyes. Just to see her sitting
there more than repaid the trouble.
“The faith that conquers,” said Miss Marvin, watching the two go away
from Sabbath School together, “is the faith that goes right to work,
and keeps at it.”
III.
PLAYING “INJUNS.”
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I
shall be whiter than snow.”
“We’re playing Injuns; that’s what ’tis,” said Tod, as his mother
opened the shed door and stepped back, exclaiming, “Well, what now?”
Jackson, the gardener, had been painting brick-work, trellises, vases,
etc., and put away his materials, red, white, and green paint, with the
brushes, on the lower shelf of the tool-room, opening out of the shed.
Tod and Maybee had discovered the treasures, and with the help of an
old feather duster had transformed themselves into quite respectable
savages.
“It’ll come off easy,” said Tod, pulling out the feathers and rubbing
his hand over both cheeks, blending the different colors into one
neutral tint, around which his yellow hair stood out like an aureola.
“Was there ever such children!” sighed Mamma Smith despairingly.
“There’s no washing it off. Do come here, Dolly, and see what _can_ be
done.”
“Oh laws! jest let me have some sperits of turpentine,” said faithful
Dolly, who had reigned in the Smith kitchen years before Tod was born.
“I’ll go get some of Jackson, and do you childern jest run round to the
kitchen. We’ll hev it fixed in no time.”
“I sha’n’t have any spurtuntine on my face,” said Maybee decidedly, as
Dolly disappeared in search of Jackson. “What’s water for, I’d like to
know, if ’tisn’t to wash in,—soap an’ water, that’s what my mamma
uses. I don’t think Dolly knows.”
“My guesses her does,” returned Tod, looking ruefully at each little
red and green finger, “but—it’s being scwubbed; my’d rather scwub his
own self.”
“She won’t spurtuntine me,” repeated Maybee, slowly following Tod, who,
to his honor be it told, never thought of going anywhere but straight
to the kitchen. “What makes you let her?”
“’Cause my mamma say her must, an’ my doesn’t want to be a forever ’n
’never Injun, does my?”
“I’d just lieves,” rejoined Maybee sullenly. “We hadn’t played scalp
’em, nor had a pow-wow, nor nothing. It’s real mean they found us so
quick.”
“Only—p’raps ’twould a dried on,” said Tod, looking doubtfully at
Maybee’s tattooed cheeks and feeling of his own.
“Hurry along!” called Dolly, from the back door. “I can’t fool round
all the morning; and besides, I was jest going to fry some crullers,
an’ you know what kind of boys ’tis gets hot crullers to eat; ’tain’t
red and black ones now.”
That helped Tod wonderfully. He marched in like a Trojan, and manfully
stood all the rubbing and rinsing, with only a faint little squeal
whenever nose or ears threatened to come quite off. Maybee curled up in
a chair, her black eyes shining defiantly from out the red and green
rings.
“’Twasn’t so very bad, was it, Bub?” said Dolly, with a final sweep of
her softest towel, “and you’re as sweet and clean as a posy, letting
alone the turpentine smell. Now, lemme give my crullers a stir, an’
we’ll look after you, Miss Maybee.”
“Guess I can look after my own self,” muttered Maybee, slipping over to
the sink in Dolly’s absence, and seizing a cake of yellow soap. Two or
three whisks of the soapy hands over her face, and the black eyes shone
out from the mottled ground-work like stars in a cloudy sky.
“Oh, my gracious!” said Dolly, reappearing. “Now you’ve been and done
it! Didn’t you know ev’ry such thing only makes it wuss an’ wuss? You
couldn’t never git it off, yourself, try as long as you live. Come, I
sha’n’t hurt skersely any.”
“Feels good now,” said Tod encouragingly.
“’Tain’t more’n half off, much,” rejoined Maybee, who, like all
uncomfortable people wanted to make somebody else uncomfortable.
“Yes, ’tis,” affirmed Tod, feeling his face over.
“You don’t know; you haven’t looked in the glass,” pouted Maybee.
“Yes, my does, ’cause her said her’d get it off, an’ her never tells
lies,” answered Tod triumphantly.
“To be sure,” said Dolly, giving Tod a hug. “Come, now, it’s just as
easy.”
“I sha’n’t!” persisted Maybee, backing into the farthest corner. “I
won’t be washed, so there!”
“Oh well, jest as you please,” said Dolly, gathering up her towels. “If
you’d rather look like a wild Injun, I don’t know as anybody cares.
Remember, it’s your own fault, that’s all.”
Now Dolly had forgotten and the children knew nothing about Tryphosa
Harte, sitting just inside the dining-room door. Tryphosa had come for
the clothes; her mother did Mrs. Smith’s washing, and she was waiting
for the bundle to be made ready. She had never come for the clothes
till since she began to go to Sabbath School. She liked, now, to meet
the girls of her class on the street, to get a pleasant “Good morning”
from Miss Cox or Miss Marvin, as she passed, and above all to have Say
Ellis run out, as she was sure to do, and walk a little ways down the
lane with her. By working extra at noon she could get the half hour
for her errand, and it was a great help to her mother. Tryphosa never
used to think of that, but she thought of a great many new things
now-a-days. Yesterday Miss Marvin heard the Sabbath School class, and
in her plain, simple way had told them how sin blackened and stained
the heart, and how only the blood of Jesus could make it clean again;
that nothing they could do for themselves would whiten it the least
bit: they were simply to ask God, and he would make it “white as snow.”
But people didn’t want to be clean, she said, or else they wanted to
be cleansed their own way, although God’s way was so simple. It was so
very strange everybody didn’t want God for their friend and heaven for
their home.
Hearing or caring about God or heaven was all new to Phosy, but she
thought she could love Miss Marvin’s God; she didn’t feel afraid,
as she did when Miss Cox talked about him. She would like such a
friend; she would much rather have her heart sweet and clean, like the
clover-fields, than like the filthy, dirty streets down by the mills;
but she couldn’t understand the “_how_”—the three steps Miss Marvin
called it,—wanting, asking, believing. Listening to the talk out in
the kitchen that morning, somehow it grew wonderfully plain. Wasn’t it
something like? Maybee didn’t want to be clean, or rather she wanted to
be washed her own way; and how foolish she was! Tod had trusted himself
to Dolly, and his round rosy, happy face told he had not been deceived.
Up in the little attic chamber of the old house, in the few minutes
saved from her scanty nooning, Phosy kneeled down, and with a whole
heartful of longing, said, “Dear Father in heaven, wash me, for I want
to be clean, an’ nobody else can make me.” Then she went away to the
noisy factory, happier than she ever remembered of being before.
“What’s come over Phosy Harte?” said one and another of the girls as
the days went by. “She don’t swear more’n half as much, and she goes
purring round, spry and happy as a kitten.”
They didn’t know, they wouldn’t have understood if they had, the “new
life” that had come to Phosy. They could only see what it was doing
for hand and eye and tongue. She might not always be as happy. There
were all those dreadful habits to be fought with and conquered; but a
great God had promised to help her,—one whose word never fails, and
who had laid up for her “white robes” and a “crown,”—for all those,
indeed, who are “washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb,” not
for sin-blackened souls who refuse to be made clean.
IV.
GREEDY BELL AND HONEST BENNIE.
“He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that
hateth gifts shall live.”
“Narrow escape!” said one to another as the crowd separated.
A run-away horse had dashed against the phaeton containing Mrs.
Forbush and her niece, upsetting it, and throwing both occupants out.
Fortunately their own horse remained perfectly manageable, and a few
slight bruises were all the injuries received. Miss Marvin was taken up
insensible, but soon recovered.
“Nothing worse than a shock to the nervous system. She will be out in a
day or two,” said good old Dr. Helps, who never frightened his patients
to death for the sake of a marvellous cure.
The next morning Miss Marvin’s purse was discovered to be missing.
“It was in your chatelaine pocket and must have dropped out. Of course,
with such a crowd you’ll never see it again; but then, it’s a mercy
our necks weren’t broken,” said Mrs. Forbush, consolingly. “I’m going
down street, now. Bell will wait on you. Don’t exert yourself at all,
remember.”
Just after Mrs. Forbush had gone, there was a ring at the door. Bell
peeped out of the window.
“It’s only a boy—a telegram, may be. I’ll run down myself,” she said.
She was back in a moment all out of breath.
“O Cousin Mate! it’s your purse. Bennie Cargill, he found it this
morning right where you were upset. Don’t you know you asked Sunday who
that boy was up in the gallery, and—”
“Stop a minute, Bell.” Miss Marvin opened her portemonnaie. “It’s all
right; the boy hasn’t gone, has he? Run quick and give him this,”
taking out a bill, “and ask him to come and see me some day, so I can
thank him myself.”
Bell hurried down again, out of doors, into the street.
“Oh, no indeed!” said Bennie, coming back to meet her, and touching his
cap politely. “I couldn’t; my mother wouldn’t like me to take anything
for doing what I ought.”
“But my cousin sent it to you, and wants you to come and see her some
day.”
“I should like to do that ever so much; but not this, please. It would
look as if I did it for pay.”
“Well, what if you did?” said Bell, whose finer impulses, I am sorry to
own, had been deadened by vanity and selfishness.
“I would rather do it because it’s _right_ and _honest_,” said the boy
simply, at the same time putting both hands behind him as if afraid the
longing awakened by the new, crisp bank-note might prove too strong a
temptation. “I think _she_ will understand,” and he walked briskly away
again.