"Don't you think, mamma, that Miss Atkinson must be a good d_More Bed-Time Stories

MORE BED-TIME STORIES.

AGAINST WIND AND TIDE.

Jack Ramsdale was a bad boy. He had been a bad boy so long that

secretly he was rather tired of it; but he really did not know how to

help himself. It was his reputation, and it is a curious thing how

naturally we all live up to our reputations; that is to say, we do the

things which are expected of us. There is a deal of homely sense in

the old proverb, "Give a dog a bad name and hang him." Give a boy a

bad name, and he is reasonably sure to deserve one. Not but that Jack

Ramsdale had fairly earned his bad name. His mother had died before he

was old enough to remember her, so he had never known what a home was.

Once, when his father was unusually good-natured, he had asked him

some questions about his mother.

"She was one of God's saints, if ever there was one," the man answered,

half reluctantly. "Everybody wondered that she took up with me, but

maybe it was because she saw I needed her more than anybody else did.

She might have made a different man of me if she'd lived; at least,

I've always thought so. I never drank so much when she was alive

but what I kept a comfortable home over her head. But when she was

gone, it didn't appear to me there was any thing left to live for. I

lacked comfort sorely, and I don't say but what I've sought for it in

by-paths,--by and forbidden paths, as she used to say."

"I wish I could ha' seen her," said Jack.

"She was a dreadful motherly creetur, and was always hangin' over you.

Cold nights I've known her get up half-a-dozen times, often, to see if

the clothes was all up over your shoulders; and sometimes I've seen her

stand there looking down at you in the biting cold till I thought she'd

freeze; but I didn't dare to say any thing, for her lips were movin',

and I knew she was prayin' for you. She was a prayin' woman, your

mother was. I used to think her prayers would save both of us."

"I can't make out how she looked," Jack persisted. He was so anxious

to hear something about this dead mother who had loved him so. Ever

since she died, he had been knocked round from pillar to post, as they

say, with his father. Sam Ramsdale was good help, as all the farmers

knew, when he was sober; but he was not reliable, and then he had the

disadvantage of always being incumbered with the boy, whom he took with

him everywhere,--an unkempt, undisciplined little fellow whom no one

liked. Now, as his father talked, it seemed to him so strange a thing

to think that some one used to stand beside his bed in cold winter

nights and pray for him, that he could hardly believe it; and he said

again, out of his desolate longing,--

"I wish I could ha' seen how she looked."

"I don't suppose folks would ha' said she was much to look at." His

father spoke, in a musing sort of way. "She was a little pale slip of

a woman, with soft yellow hair droopin' about her white face, and eyes

as blue as them blue flowers you picked up along the road. But there,

I can't talk about her, and I ain't a goin' to, what's more; and don't

you ever ask me again!"

From that time Jack never dared to ask any more questions about

his mother, but all through his troublesome, turbulent boyhood he

remembered the meagre outlines of the story which had been told him. No

matter how bad he had been through the day, the nights were few when he

failed to think how once a pale slip of a woman, with soft yellow hair

around her white face, and eyes blue as the blue gentians, had bent

above his slumbers and said prayers for him.

When he was ten years old his father died in the poor-house. Drink had

enfeebled his constitution; a sudden cold did the rest. There were a

few weeks of terrible suffering, and then the end came. Jack was with

him to the last. There was nowhere else for him to be, and the father

liked to have him in his sight. One day, just before the end, when they

were all alone, the man called the boy to his bedside.

"I can't tell you to follow my example, Jack; that's the shame of it.

I've got to hold myself up as a warnin', and not as an example. Just

you steer as clear o' my ways as you can; but remember that your mother

was a prayin' woman. I s'pose nobody'd believe it, Jack; but since I've

been lyin' here I've kinder felt nearer to her than I ever did before

since she died. Seems as if I could a'most hear her prayin' for me; and

I think, by times, that the God she lived so close to won't say no.

It's the 'leventh hour, Jack, the 'leventh hour, I know that as well as

anybody; but she used to sing a hymn about while the lamp holds out to

burn. When I get there I shall get rid of this awful thirst for drink.

It's been an _awful_ thirst; no hunger that I know of can match it; but

I shall get rid of that when this old body goes to pieces. And what

does a Saviour mean, if it ain't that He'll save us from our sins if we

ask Him?"

As he said these last words he seemed sinking into a sort of stupor,

but he started out of it to say once more,--

"Never follow my example, Jack, boy. Remember your mother was a prayin'

woman."

Those were the last connected words any one ever heard him speak. After

that the night came on,--the double night of darkness and of death.

Once or twice the woman who acted as nurse, bending over him, heard him

mutter, "The 'leventh hour, Jack!" and afterwards she wondered whether

it was a presentiment, for it was just at eleven o'clock that he died.

Jack had been sent to bed a little before, and when he got up in the

morning, he knew that he was all alone in the world.

After the funeral Deacon Small took him home. He wouldn't be of much

use for two or three years to come, the deacon said. Maybe he could

drive up the cows, and ride the horse to plough, and scare the crows

away from the corn, but he couldn't earn his salt for a number o' years

to come. However, somebody must take him, and he guessed _he_ would. It

would be a good spell before the "creetur" would come of age, and the

last part of the time he might be smart enough to pay off old scores.

But surely Jack Ramsdale must have eaten more salt than ever boy of

ten ate before if he did not work enough for it, for it was Jack here,

and Jack there, all day long. Jack did everybody's errands; Jack drew

Mrs. Small's baby-grandchild in its little covered wagon; Jack scoured

the knives; Jack brought the wood; Jack picked berries; Jack weeded

flower-beds. From being an idle little chap, in everybody's way, as he

had been in his father's time, he was pressed right into hard service,

for more hours in the day than any man worked about the place. Now work

is good for boys, but all work and no play--worse yet, all work and no

love--is not good for any one. Jack grew bitter; and where he dared to

be cruel, he was cruel; where he dared to be insolent, he was insolent.

Not toward Deacon Small, however, were these qualities displayed. The

deacon was a hard master, and the boy feared, and hated, and obeyed

him. But as the years went on, five of them, he grew to be generally

considered a bad boy. At fifteen he was strong of his age, a man,

almost, in size.

His schooling had been confined to the short winter terms, and he had

always been the terror of every successive schoolmaster.

When he was fifteen, a new teacher came,--a handsome, graceful

young man, just out of college. He was slight rather than stout,

well-dressed, well-mannered, fit, you would have said, for a lady's

drawing-room, rather than the country schoolhouse in winter, with its

big boys, tough customers, many of them, and Jack Ramsdale the toughest

customer of all. After Mr. Garrison had passed his examination, one of

the committee, impressed by what he thought a certain-fine-gentleman

air in the young man, warned him of the rough times in store for him,

and especially of the rough strength and insubordination of Jack

Ramsdale. Ralph Garrison smiled a calm smile, but uttered no boasts.

He had been a week in the school before he had any especial trouble.

Jack was taking his measure. The truth was, the boy had a certain

amount of taste, and Garrison's gentlemanliness impressed him more than

he would have cared to own. It is possible that he might have gone

on, quietly and obediently, but that now his bad name began to weigh

him down. The boys who had looked up to him as a leader in evil grew

impatient of his quiet submission to rules. "Got your match, Jack?"

said one. "Goin' to own beat without giving it a try?" said another.

And Jack began to think that the evil laurels he had won, as the bravo

and bully of the school, would fall withered from his brow if he didn't

make some effort to fasten them.

So one morning, midway between recess and the close of school, he took

out an apple and began paring it with a jack-knife and eating it. For

a moment Mr. Garrison looked at him; then he remarked, with ominous

quietness, in a tone lower and more gentle than usual,--

"Jack, this is not the place or time for eating."

"My place and time to eat are when I am hungry," Jack answered, with

cool insolence, cutting off a mouthful, and carrying it deliberately to

his mouth.

"You will put up that apple instantly, if you please."

Still the teacher spoke very gently, and turned a little pale. The

persuasive words and the slight paleness misled Jack. He thought his

victory was to be so easily won, there would not even be any glory in

it. He smiled and ate, quite at his ease.

"You will come here whether you please or not," was the next sentence

from the teacher's desk. Jack cut off another mouthful and sat still.

Then, he never knew how it was, but suddenly, in the twinkling of

an eye, he felt himself pulled from his seat out into the middle of

the floor while knife and apple flew from his hand. He kicked, he

struggled, he tried to strike; but an iron grasp held his wrists. The

strong muscles of the stroke-oar at Harvard did good service. The

handsome face was pale, but the lips were set like steel, and the cool

eyes never wavered as they fixed and held those of the young bully.

Then suddenly he whipped from his pocket a ball of strong fish-line and

bound the struggling wrists tightly, and, pushing a chair toward his

captive, said, coolly,--

"I want nothing more of you till after school. You can sit or stand, as

you please. Now I will hear the first class in arithmetic."

There was a strange hush in the school, and every scholar knew who was

master.

When all the rest had gone, the teacher turned to Jack Ramsdale.

"I took you a little by surprise," he said. "Perhaps you are not yet

satisfied that I am stronger than you."

"Yes, I'm satisfied," Jack answered. "I ain't so mean but what I'm

willing to own beat when it's done fair and square."

Mr. Garrison, meanwhile, was untying his wrists. As he unwound the last

coil, he said,--

"The forces of law and order are what rule the world. I think if you

fight against them, you'll always be likely to find yourself on the

losing side."

A great bitter wave of defiance swelled up in Jack's heart; not against

Mr. Garrison as an individual, but against such as he,--handsome,

graceful, cultured; against his own hard lot; against a prosperous

world; against, it almost seemed, God, Himself.

"What do _you_ know about it?" he said sullenly. "You never had to

fight. It was all on your side. God did it. He made you handsome and

strong, and had you go to school and college, and grow up a gentleman.

And he made me"--how the face darkened here--"what you see. He took my

mother, who did love me and pray for me, away from me when I wasn't

more than three years old. He gave me to a father who drank hard and

taught me nothing good. And then he took even him from me, and handed

me over to Deacon Small; and I tell you, teacher, you don't know what

a tough time is till you've summered and wintered with Deacon Small.

I've got a bad name, and who wonders? and I feel like living up to

it. I hadn't any thing against you, specially; but if I'd given in

peaceably to all your rules, the boys would have said I had grown

chicken-hearted, and a little name for pluck is all the name I have

got."

Mr. Garrison looked at him a few moments, steadily. Then he said,--

"It does seem as if fate had been hard on you. But do you know what I

think God has been doing for you, in giving you all these hard knocks;

for things don't _happen_; God never lets go the reins."

The boy looked the question he did not speak, and Mr. Garrison went on.

"I think He has been making you strong, just as rowing against wind and

tide made my wrists strong, until now you could fight all your enemies

if you would.

"The thing we are put here for," he continued, "is to do our best; and

if we are doing that, in God's sight, there is nothing that can prevail

against us; not fate, or foes, or poverty, or any other creature. There

is nothing in all the universe that is strong enough to stand against a

soul that is bound to go up and not down. You may go home, now."

It was one of Mr. Garrison's merits that he knew when to stop. Jack

Ramsdale went home with that last sentence ringing in his ears,--

"There is nothing in all the universe that is strong enough to stand

against a soul that is bound to go up and not down."

The words went with him all the rest of the day. They lay down with

him at night, and he looked out of his window and fixed his eyes on a

bright, far-off star, and thought of them.

What if he should turn all the strength that was in him to going up

and not down? If he did right, who could make him afraid? If he served

willingly, he need fear no master. It was very late, and the star,

obedient to the law which rules the worlds, had marched far on, out

of his sight, before he went to sleep. He had made a resolve. In the

strength of that resolve he awoke to the new day.

"I will not go down," he said to himself; "I will go up and on!"

He was not all at once transformed from sinner to saint. Such sudden

changes do not belong to this slow world. But the purpose and aim of

his life was changed. Never again did he lose sight of the shining

heights he meant to climb. If the mother in the heavenly home could

look down on the world below, she knew that not in vain had she been

"a praying woman." To Mr. Garrison the boy's devotion was something

wonderful,--humble, loyal, faithful, and never ceasing. From being the

teacher's terror, Jack had become the teacher's friend.

BLUE SKY AND WHITE CLOUDS.

"Say yes, and you'll be such a dear papa."

Papa bent down and kissed his girl, before he asked, half

reproachfully,--

"And how if I say 'no'? Shan't I be dear, then?"

Kathie blushed, and then laughed.

"Why, of course you'll be dear, any way; but may be it's partly because

you are so good, and hate so to say no to your own little daughter,

that I love you so much."

"To my little daughter as tall as her mother? Do you know, small

person, that I've often thought it might be better for that same little

daughter if I said no to her oftener? I couldn't love you more, but I'm

afraid I might love you more wisely. A hundred and twenty-five dollars

for a new party dress! Bring your own mature judgment to bear on it,

and tell me if it appears quite sage, even to you."

Kathie thought so hard for a moment that she fairly scowled with

earnestness; then she answered,--

"Yes, on the whole, I think it will be eminently judicious. You see,

I shall be going out a good deal now, and I can do so many different

things with a handsome silk, and if I got a tarleton, or any of those

cheap, thin goods, it would be used up at once."

Papa smiled.

"Well, if you are quite sure you're right, I'll bring the check home

this noon, and you and mamma can begin your search for this wonderful

yellow gown."

"Yellow!" Kathie clapped her hands to her ears. "What did I ever do to

make you think I would wear a horrid yellow gown?"

"Oh, was it red you said you wanted?"

"Worse and worse. You talk like a Hottentot. My gown is to be blue,

soft, and lustrous, like a summer sky, and I am to look in it,--well,

you shall see on Christmas Eve."

Then, with half a dozen good-by kisses, the father of this only

child--happy, easy-going, and too indulgent--took himself off down

town, and Kathie danced away to the sewing-room to find her mother and

inform her of her success.

Kathie Mason, at sixteen, was a girl bright, and sweet, and bonny

enough to tempt any parent to a little over-indulgence. She had soft,

sunny, yellow hair; and lovely, dark brown eyes; with a look in them

that kept saying, "Oh, be good to me!"; a delicate, flower-like face;

and a mouth red as Fair Rosamond's, which has long been dust now, but

which poets and painters raved about centuries ago. She had a graceful

little figure, and a clear, fresh young voice; and she had a heart,

too, which was in the right place, though she herself was almost a

stranger to it. She loved beauty dearly, whether in books, or nature,

or human faces, or blue silk gowns, and it was just as natural to her

to be a picture, whatever way she looked or moved, as it was to be

Kathie.

As she danced along she was humming a verse of a gay little French

_chanson_, where some lover said his love was like a rose; and you

thought it might have been written about herself, only Kathie had

no thorns. As she drew near the sewing-room she stopped, for her

mother and the dress-maker were talking busily. Miss Atkinson was a

pathetic little woman, with eyes which looked as if the color had been

washed out of them by many tears, a thin, frail body, and a voice not

complaining, but simply plaintive. Somehow Kathie hated to break in

upon the slow pathos of those tones with her blue silk ecstasy, so she

stood leaning against the door for a few moments and waited.

"You see," the little woman was saying, "it was a great pull-back,

my being sick two months in the summer, and then my brother being so

much worse. But it will all come right, somehow. If I can manage to

get Alice clothed up so she can go to school, I shall be thankful; for

she's a bright child, and it's too bad to have her wasting her time.

But then, food and fire must come first, and if people are sick they

are sick, and two hands can't do any more than they can."

There was nothing to oppose to this mild fatalism; so Kathie's mother

only said, very sympathizingly, that it was hard, and that it seemed

as if, with her sister and her sister's child to support, Miss

Atkinson had all she could do before, without undertaking any new

responsibilities for the ailing brother and his family.

"Oh! but there's no one else to do it if I don't, you see," quoth the

little dress-maker, almost cheerfully--as cheerfully, that is, as her

voice could be made to speak; but Kathie noticed that a moment after

she pressed her hand on her side and drew a sharp, hard breath.

"Does your side pain you, Miss Atkinson?" she asked, kindly.

"Not much more than usual. It's rather bad, most days. I went to work

too soon after I was sick, the doctor said. But he didn't tell me how

the rest were going to live if I laid by any longer; and, dear me, I'm

thankful enough to be able to work at all."

Kathie thought she should be ashamed to have this poor little woman,

who had two people besides herself to provide for, entirely, and no

knowing how many more, in part, work on her blue silk superfluity.

Clearly _that_ must be made by some other dress-maker; and she could

not even speak to her mother about it now; so she just asked for some

work, and sat down with it, thinking more seriously than, perhaps, she

had ever thought in her gay, butterfly life before.

"How old is your little niece, Alice?" she asked, after a while.

"Ten, and she is as far along in her studies now as a good many girls

of twelve. I did mean to have sent her straight through, normal school

and all, and let her prepare to be a teacher; but it doesn't look much

like it, now William's taken so poorly. I expect I shall have to pretty

much clothe his three children besides Alice."

"Can't your sister, little Alice's mother, help you at all?"

"Well, yes, she does help. She does all she's able to, and more; for,

you see, she's feeble, too. She keeps house for us, and cooks, and

washes and makes our things after I fit them, and keeps us mended;

but there's nothing she can do to bring in any thing. But there, I

beg your pardon ten times over, apiece. It's against my principles to

go out sewing, and harrow up folks' minds with my troubles; only, you

see, I'm a little nervous and unsettled to-day on account of Alice's

crying pretty hard this morning because she hadn't any thing to wear to

school."

Papa Mason took Kathie aside when he came home to dinner, and with a

little fun, and teasing, and pretence of mystery, produced the check.

There it was, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, all right, and three

weeks between now and Christmas Eve to get her blue silk gown made.

While she ate her roast beef she began to think again. One question

kept asking itself over in her mind,--Why should some people have blue

silk gowns, and others have no gowns at all? I rather think we have

all asked ourselves this same thing, in one form of words or another.

Since the great Father made and loves us all, why should one be Queen

Victoria and another little Alice staying at home from school for want

of a few yards of woollen and a pair of boots? Political economists

have ciphered it all out, beautifully; but Kathie did not know that,

and so the vexing question puzzled her. What if it was done just to

give us a chance to help each other? she asked herself, at last, and

the text of a sermon she heard once came into her mind,--"Bear ye one

another's burdens." If all fared just alike there would be no chance

for helpfulness, or charity, or self-denial; so may be clothes would be

put on people's backs at the expense of better things in their hearts.

It must be that God knew best. Oh! if one couldn't think that, the

world might as well fall to pieces at once.

"Will you have pudding, dear? I have asked you three times," said Mrs.

Mason's voice, with a little extra energy in it; and Kathie looked up

out of her dream with a certain vagueness in her eyes, and answered,--

"A hundred and twenty-five," whereat they all laughed.

"I can't give you a hundred and twenty-five puddings; but, if you'll

please make a beginning with this one, no doubt the rest will come

before the year is over."

Whereupon Kathie roused herself from her speculations, ate her pudding,

and sent her plate for more, with a good, healthy, girlish appetite.

That afternoon she sewed quite diligently, and talked little; but her

eyes were bright, and her face all the time eager with some thought.

After tea was over, and Miss Atkinson had gone, and papa had stepped

out to see a business friend, Kathie sat down, as was one of her

habits, on a low stool beside her mother, and laid her head in her lap.

Mrs. Mason knew that all the afternoon's thinking would come out before

the child got up again; so she just smoothed the fluffy, yellow hair

with her hand and waited.

"Don't you think, mamma, that Miss Atkinson must be a good deal better

Christian than the rest of us, she's such a patient burden-bearer? She

never seemed to think for one moment that it was hard she should have

to work so, or that she couldn't have what she wanted herself. All

that troubled her was because she couldn't do what she had planned for

Alice."

Then, when Mrs. Mason had made some slight answer, there was silence

again for a time; and then Kathie cried impulsively,--

"Mamma, what a perfect good-for-nothing I am. I never carried a burden

for any one in my life. I have just been a dead weight on some one

else's hands."

"Not a _dead_ weight, by any means," and Mrs. Mason laughed, "and

really, papa and I have found it rather a pleasure than otherwise to

carry you."

The loving girl kissed the hand that had been stroking her hair, but

she was quite too much in earnest to laugh.

"Well, mamma, you know it doesn't say,--'Bear ye one another's burdens,

all of you but Kathie, and she needn't.' I think this rule without any

exceptions means me, just as much as it does any one; and I shan't feel

quite right in my own mind till I begin to follow it. I want to bear

part of Alice."

Kathie was talking very fast by this time, and her cheeks were very

pink, and her brown eyes very bright.

"You see I've thought it all out, this afternoon. If Miss Atkinson will

feed her and house her, I do think I might undertake to clothe her

until she is through school and ready to teach; and don't you think

I'd feel better when I came to die to have done some little thing for

somebody? You see it would come very easy. My dresses, and cloaks,

and hats would all make over for her. There wouldn't be much to buy

outright, except boots, and stockings, and under clothes, generally."

"And wouldn't you find all that rather a heavy drain on your

pocket-money? I don't ask to discourage you, childie; only I want you

to consider it all thoroughly, for if you should once undertake this

thing and lead Miss Atkinson and Alice to depend on it, there could be

no drawing back then."

"Yes, I have thought about it all. Didn't you see me working it out

in my head this afternoon, like a sum in arithmetic? I think half the

money papa gives me for lunches, and presents, and the other things

pocket-money goes for, would be just as good for me as the whole; and

I am sure with half of it I could keep Alice along nicely after I

once got her started; and its just about this start I want to speak

to you now. Papa gave me a hundred and twenty-five dollars to-day to

buy me a blue silk gown for Aunt Jane's Christmas-Eve party. Now fifty

dollars will get me a lovely white muslin, and a blue sash, and all the

fresh little fixings I should need; and that would leave seventy-five

dollars, with which I could buy flannels, and boots, and water-proof,

and a good, warm, strong outfit altogether, for Alice to commence with.

Now do you think papa would be willing? I don't want to ask him, for he

doesn't understand silks and muslins, or what Alice needs; but would

you answer for him? Just think, mamma, what burdens poor Miss Atkinson

has to bear."

Mrs. Mason started to say,--"It is all for her own relations,"--but

stopped, for the command didn't read, "Relations, bear _ye_ one

another's burdens." Had she any right to interfere between Kathie

and this first work of charity the child had ever been inspired to

undertake? Would not this object of interest outside herself, apart

from blue silk gowns, and flounces, and furbelows, do something for

her girl that was likely to be left undone otherwise? What a very cold

loving-one-another we were most of us doing in this world, after all?

So she bent over and kissed the eager, lovely, upturned face that

waited for her words, and said fondly,--

"Yes, I will answer for papa, my darling. I approve your plan heartily,

but I will not offer help. This shall be all your own good work."

The next morning Miss Atkinson was told of the new plan. Her faded eyes

opened twice as widely as usual. She was not sure she heard aright.

"Do you mean to say Miss Kathie, that you undertake, with your mamma's

full consent, to clothe Alice until she is through school?"

"That is precisely what I bind myself to do," Kathie answered, gravely

copying the solemnity of the little dress-maker.

"Then all I have to say is, bless you, and bless the Lord. You never

can tell what good you're doing."

And then the poor little woman began to cry, just for pure joy; and she

sobbed till Mamma Mason felt her eyes growing misty, and Kathie ran

away out of the room.

Be sure that Miss Atkinson made up Kathie's muslin lovingly. It would

not be her fault if it were not prettier than any silk. And truly, when

Christmas Eve came and Kathie was dressed for Aunt Jane's party, there

could hardly have been a more radiant vision than this white-robed

shape with the sunny, soft hair, the gleaming brown eyes, and the

wild-rose cheeks, where the color came and went. Her father looked her

over with all his heart in his eyes, and a tenderness which quivered in

his voice, though he tried to speak jestingly.

"So there wasn't blue sky enough for any thing but your sash, and you

had to take white clouds for the rest."

"_Just_ that. Don't you like the clouds?"

He bent and kissed her.

"Yes, I like the clouds; and I think the sunshine struck through them

for somebody."

THE COUSIN FROM BOSTON.

We had been friends ever since I could remember, Nelly and I. We were

just about the same age. Our parents were neighbors, in the quiet

country town where we both lived. I was an only child; and Nelly was an

only daughter, with two strong brothers who idolized her.

We were always together. We went to the same school, and sat on the

same bench, and used the same desk. We learned the same lessons. I had

almost said we thought the same thoughts. We certainly loved the same

pleasures. We used to go together, in early spring, to hunt the dainty

may-flowers from under the sheltering dead leaves, and to find the shy

little blue-eyed violets. We went hand in hand into the still summer

woods, and gathered the delicate maiden-hair, and the soft mosses, and

all the summer wealth of bud and blossom. Gay little birds sang to us.

The deep blue sky bent over us, and the happy little brooks murmured

and frolicked at our feet.

In autumn we went nutting and apple gathering. In the winter we slid,

and coasted, and snowballed. For every season, there was some special

pleasure,--and always Nelly and I were together,--always sufficient to

each other, for company. We never dreamed that any thing could come

between us, or that we could ever learn to live without each other.

We were thirteen when Nelly's cousin from Boston--Lill Simmonds, her

name was--came to see her. It was vacation then, and I had not seen

Nelly for two days, because it had been raining hard. So I did not know

of the expected guest, until one morning Nelly's brother Tom came over,

and told me that his Aunt Simmonds, from Boston, was expected that

noon, and with her his Cousin Lill.

"She'll be a nice playmate for you and Nelly," he said. "She's only a

year older than you two, and she used to have plenty of fun in her.

Nelly wants you to come over this afternoon, sure."

That was the beginning of my feeling hard toward Nelly. I was

unreasonable, I know, but I thought she might have come to tell me

the news, herself. I felt a sort of bitter, shut-out feeling all the

forenoon, and after dinner I was half minded not to go over,--to let

her have her Boston cousin all to herself.

My mother heard some of my speeches, but she was wise enough not to

interfere. When she saw, at last, that curiosity and inclination had

gotten the better of pique and jealousy, she basted a fresh ruffle in

the neck of my afternoon dress, and tied a pretty blue ribbon in my

hair, and I looked as neat and suitable for the occasion as possible.

At least I thought so, until I got to Nelly's. She did not watch for

my coming, and run to the gate to meet me, as usual. Of course it was

perfectly natural that she should be entertaining her cousin, but I

missed the accustomed greeting; and when she heard my voice at the

door, and came out of the parlor to speak to me, I know that if my

face reflected my heart, it must have worn a most sullen and unamiable

expression.

"I'm so glad you've come, Sophie," she said cheerfully. "Lill is in the

parlor. I want you to like her. But you can't help it, I know, she's so

lovely; such a beauty."

"Perhaps I shan't see with your eyes," I answered, with what I imagined

to be most cutting coldness and dignity.

"Oh yes! I guess you will," she laughed. "We have thought alike about

most things, all our lives."

I followed her into the parlor, and I saw Lill. If you are a country

girl who read, and have ever been suddenly confronted with a city

young lady in the height of fashion, to whom you were expected to

make yourself agreeable, you can, perhaps, understand what I felt;

particularly if by nature you are not only sensitive, but somewhat

vain, as I am sorry to confess I was. I had been used to think myself

as well-dressed, and as well-looking as any of my young neighbors; I

was neither as well-dressed nor as well-looking as Lill Simmonds.

Nelly was right. She was a beauty. She was a little taller than Nelly

or I,--a slender, graceful creature, with a high-bred air. It was

years before they had begun to crimp little girls' hair, but I think

Lill's must have been crimped. It was a perfect golden cloud about her

face and shoulders, and all full of little shining waves and ripples.

Then what eyes she had--star bright and deep blue and with lashes so

long that when they drooped they cast a shadow on the pale pink of

her cheeks. Her features were all delicate and pure; her hands white,

with one or two glittering rings upon them; and her clothes! My own

gowns had not seemed to me ill-made before; but now I thought Nelly and

I both looked as if we had come out of the ark. It was the first of

September, and her dress had just been made for fall,--a rich, glossy,

blue poplin, with soft lace at throat and wrists, and a pin and some

tiny ear jewels of exquisitely cut pink coral.

"Yes," I thought to myself bitterly, "no wonder Nelly was dazzled.

_She_ may like to be the contrast, to help Miss Fine-Airs show off; but

I object to that character, and I shall keep pretty clear of this house

while Miss Lill is in it."

I spoke to her politely enough, I suppose; and she answered me, it

might have been either shyly or haughtily: I chose in my then mood to

think the latter. Decidedly the afternoon was not a success.

Nelly did her best to make it pleasant; but she and I couldn't go

poking about into all sorts of odd places, as we did when we were

alone, and we did not know what the Boston cousin would like to do; so

we put on our company manners and _talked_, and for an illustration of

utter dulness and dreariness commend me to a "talk" between three girls

in their early teens, who have nothing of the social ease which comes

of experience and culture, and where two of them have nothing in common

with the other, as regards daily pursuits and habits of life. Lill

talked a little about Burnham's--it was before Loring's day--but we had

read no novelists but Scott and Dickens, and we couldn't discuss with

her whether it wasn't too bad that Gerald married Isabel and did not

marry Margaret.

We might have brightened a little over the supper, but then Mrs.

Simmonds, who had been sitting upstairs with Nelly's mother, was

present,--a stately dame, in rustling silk and gleaming jewels, who

overawed me completely. I was glad to go home; but the little root of

bitterness I had carried in my heart had grown, until, for the time, it

choked out every thing sweet and good.

While the Boston cousin stayed, I saw little of Nelly. I am telling the

truth, and I must confess it was my fault. I know now that Nelly was

unchanged; but, of course, she was very much occupied. Whenever I saw

her she was so full of Lill's praises that I foolishly thought I was

nothing to her any more, and Lill was every thing. If I had chosen to

verify her words, instead of chafe at them, I, too, might have enjoyed

Lill's grace and beauty, and learned from her a great many things worth

knowing. But I took my own course, and if the cup I drank was bitter,

it was of my own brewing.

At last, one afternoon, Nelly came over by herself to see me. I was

most ungracious in my welcome.

"I don't see how you could tear yourself away from your city company,"

I said, with that small, hateful sarcasm, which is so often a girl's

weapon. "They say self-denial is blest: I hope yours will be."

Perhaps Nelly guessed that my hatefulness had its root in pain; or it

may have been that her own heart was too full of something else for her

to notice my mood.

"Lill is going to-morrow," she said, gently.

"Indeed!" I answered; "I don't know how the town will support the loss

of so much beauty and grace. I suppose I shall see more of you then;

but I must not be selfish enough to rejoice in the general misfortune."

Nelly's gentle eyes filled with tears at last.

"Sophie," she said, "how can you be so unkind, you whom I have loved

all my life? I am going, too, with Lill, and that is what I came to

tell you. Ever since she has been here, Aunt Simmonds has been trying

to persuade mother to let me go back for a year's schooling with Lill,

but it was not decided until last night. Mother thought, at first, that

I must wait to have my winter things made; but Aunt Simmonds said she

could get them better in Boston, and the same woman would make them for

me who makes Lill's."

"Indeed! How well dressed you will be!" I said bitterly. "How you will

respect yourself!"

"Sophie, I don't _know_ you," Nelly burst out, indignantly. "The

hardest of all was to leave you, for we've been together all our lives;

but you are making it easy. Good-by."

She put her arms round me, even then, and kissed me, and I responded

coldly. Oh how could I, when I loved her so? I watched her out of

sight, and then I sank down upon the grass, and laid my head upon a

little bench where we had often sat together, and sobbed and cried till

I could scarcely see. I was half tempted to go over to Nelly's, and ask

her to forgive me; but my wicked pride and jealousy wouldn't let me.

Lill would be there, I thought, and she wouldn't want me while she had

Lill. So I stayed away.

The next morning they all went off. When I heard the car-whistle at the

little railroad station a mile and a half away, I began to cry again.

Then, if it had not been too late, I would have gone and implored my

friend to forgive me, and not shut me out of her heart. But the day for

repentance was over.

The slow months went on. I missed Nelly at school, at home, everywhere.

I longed for her with an incurable longing. It was to me almost as if

she were dead. People wrote many less letters in those days than they

do now, and neither Nelly nor I had learned to express any thing of

our real selves on paper. We exchanged three or four letters, but they

amounted to little more than the statement that we were well, and the

list of our studies. One look into Nelly's eyes would have been worth a

thousand such.

There were other pleasant girls in town, but I took none of them into

Nelly's vacant place: how could I? Who of them would remember all my

past life, as she did,--she who had shared with me so many perfect

days of June, so many long, bright summers and melancholy autumns,

and winters white with snow? I was, as I have shown you, jealous and

hateful and cruel, but never for a moment fickle.

At last Nelly came again. It was a day in the late June, and she found

me just where she had left me, under the old horse-chestnut tree in

the great old-fashioned garden. I knew it must be almost time for her

coming, but I had not asked any one about it. Somehow I couldn't. I

very seldom even spoke her name in those days. So she stole upon me

unawares, and the first I knew her arms were round me,--her warm,

tender lips against my own,--and her sweet, unchanged voice cried,--

"O Sophie, this is good, this is coming home, indeed!"

I cried like a very child. Nell didn't quite understand that; but then

she had not had, like me, a hard place in her heart, which needed happy

tears to melt it away. I think, in spite of the tears, I was more glad

of the meeting even than she. After a little while she said,--

"Come, I want you to go home with me now, and see Lill."

Will you believe that even then the old, bitter jealousy began to gnaw

again at my heart? She had been with Lill almost a year; could she not

be content to give me a single hour without her? Perhaps she saw my

thought in my face; for she added, in such a sad, pitiful tone, "Poor

Lill!"

"Poor Lill," indeed! with her beautiful golden hair, and her eyes like

stars, and her lovely gowns, and her city airs, "poor Lill!"

"I should never think of calling Miss Simmonds poor," I said, with the

old hardness back in my voice.

"You will when you see her, now," Nelly answered gently. "She had a

hard fall on the icy pavement, last winter, and she hurt her hip, and

it's been growing worse and worse. She can hardly walk at all, now, and

she has suffered awfully. But she has been, oh so patient!"

And how I had dared to envy that girl! I was shocked and silenced. I

walked along by Nelly's side very quietly. When we got there she took

me up into her room, and there I saw Lill Simmonds. I should hardly

have known her. The golden glory of hair floated about her still. The

eyes were star-bright yet, but the cheeks which the long lashes shaded

were pink no longer, and they were so thin and hollow that it was

pitiful to see them.

She wore a wrapper of some soft blue stuff, and on her lap lay her

frail, transparent hands. She started up to meet us with a smile which

for a moment gave back some of the old brightness to her face, but

which faded almost instantly. I sat down beside the lounging-chair

where she was lying, but I could not talk to her. The sight of her

wasted loveliness was all too sad. After a little while she said to

Nelly,--

"Won't you, you are always so good to me, go and fetch me a glass of

the cool water from the spring at the foot of the garden?"

Nelly went instantly, and then Lill turned to me and put her hand on my

arm.

"I asked her to go, Sophie," she said, "because I wanted to speak to

you. I wanted to say something to you which it would hurt her to hear.

I used to be very jealous of you, Sophie. I wanted Nelly to love me

best, but she never did. She had loved you so long that I could see

you were always first in her heart. And now I am glad. I shall never be

well again, and when I am gone I would not like Nelly to be so unhappy

as she would be if she had loved me first and best. She will miss me,

and she will be very sorry for me; but she will have you, and you can

comfort her. I am ashamed now of that old jealousy. I think it made me

not nice to you last summer."

Lill jealous of me! I was dumb with sheer amazement. And I, how much

bitterness and injustice I had to confess! But before I could put it

into words Nelly had come back, and a look from Lill kept me silent.

That night, when I went away, I put my arms round my darling and kissed

her with my whole heart, as I had not done for a year. She never knew

how much went into that kiss, of sorrow and shame and self-reproach.

What months those were which followed! I was constantly with Nelly

and her cousin. Mrs. Simmonds was there, but Lill spent most of her

day-time hours with us girls; to spare her mother, probably, who was

with her every night, and also because she loved us both. Sometimes, on

fine days, she would walk a little under the trees; and I have knelt

unseen, in a passion of loving humility, and kissed the grass over

which she had dragged after her her helpless foot. Growing near to

death, she grew in grace. As Nelly said, one day,--

"Her wings are growing. She will fly away with them soon."

And so she did. Through the summer she lingered, suffering much at

times, but always patient and gentle and uncomplaining. And when the

dead leaves of autumn went fluttering down the wind, she died with the

dead summer, and upborne on the wings of some messenger of God her soul

went home.

Even her mother hardly dared mourn for her,--her life had been so pure

and so peaceful,--her death was so tranquil and so happy. I had ceased,

long before, to be jealous of her. No one could love her too much. She

was my saint; and her memory has hallowed many a thought during the

long, world-weary years since. I need but to close my eyes to see a

pale, patient face, with its glory of golden hair and its eyes bright

as stars; and often, on some soft wind, I seem to hear her voice,

speaking again the last words I ever heard her speak,--

"Love each other always, my darlings, and remember I loved you both."

We have obeyed her faithfully, Nelly and I. Through the long years

since, no coldness or estrangement has ever come between us. My first

and last jealousy was buried in Lill's grave; and Nelly and I have

proved, to our own satisfaction at least, that a friendship between

two girls may be strong as it is sweet, faithful as it is fond,--the

inalienable riches of a whole life.

MISSY.

Miss Hurlburt had wandered farther into the woods than was her habit,

beguiled by the wonderful loveliness overhead, underfoot, all about

her. It was an afternoon in early October, but warm as June. The leaves

were of a thousand brilliant hues; for one or two nights of keen frost,

a week before, had seemed to set them on fire. There were boughs as

scarlet as the burning bush before which Moses wondered and worshipped.

There were others of deep orange; and others, still, of variegated

leaves, where the green lingered and was mixed with scarlet and brown

and yellow, till some of them looked like patterns in a kaleidoscope.

Underfoot was the delicate, fresh woodland moss. Sometimes pine needles

made the path soft; and sometimes, leaves, which had died earlier than

their mates, rustled under Miss Hurlburt's tread. Above, high over the

flaming tree boughs, was the deep, lustrous, blue sky, with all its

heavenly secrets. The air was full of that wonderful, radiant haze of

autumn which makes the distance vague with beauty. And the temperature,

as I said, was of June; so warm that Miss Hurlburt had taken off her

hat, and let the scarlet mantle fall from her shoulders.

She herself, had a painter been there to study the scene, would have

been no unworthy wood nymph. Her figure was full, but not too full for

grace. Health and strength were in every line of it. Her fine, abundant

hair, like that of which Lowell wrote, "outwardly brown, but inwardly

golden," was brushed back from her low, broad forehead, and coiled in

a great heavy knot, from which a stray curl or two had escaped, at the

back of her proud little head.

She had great brown eyes, full of thought and feeling; cheeks, in

which the rich, warm color glowed; bright, full, half-parted lips.

She carried herself with grace, regal though unstudied. She never

consciously remembered that she was Eleanor Hurlburt,--whose father

owned the two great factories in the valley, and all the lands far

and near, even these royal woods through which she walked,--but,

unconsciously to herself, the fact gave firmness and elasticity to her

step, and self-possession to her air.

She very seldom wandered alone so far away from home. The factory

hands were a necessary part of the great wealth which surrounded Miss

Hurlburt's life with ease and luxury; but some of them might not be

altogether pleasant to meet in lonely places,--so she usually was

driven out in the elegant Victoria, with the spanking bays which were

her father's pride, by the decorous family coachman; or drove herself

in her jaunty little pony phaeton, with her own man, all bands and

buttons, seated in the rumble behind.

But to-day it happened that she was walking. I said "it happened,"

because we speak in that way before we think; though nothing is farther

from my belief than that any thing ever _happens_ in this world which

God has made, and in which He never loses sight of the smallest or

poorest thing. At any rate, Miss Hurlburt was walking, and she wandered

on, until at last she heard a tender little voice singing a tender

little song. It was so fine and clear, it might almost have been the

carol of a bird, only birds have not yet learned the English language,

and _this_ voice sang:

"Your brother has a falcon,

Your sister has a flower;

But what is left for manikin,

Born within an hour?

"I'll nurse you on my knee, my knee,

My own little son;

I'll rock you, rock you in my arms,

My least little one."