_WHAT WAS HE HERE FOR?_
Bartie Trafton, _alias_ Little Mew, was crouching behind a clump of
hollyhocks in a little garden fronting the Trafton home. It was a
favourite place of retreat when things went poorly with Little Mew.
They had certainly gone unsatisfactorily one day not long after the sail
that was not a sail. He had perpetrated a blunder that had brought out
from Gran'sir Trafton the encouraging remark that he did not see what
the boy was in this world for. Bartie had retreated to the hollyhock
clump to think the situation over. He was ten years old, and life did
have a hard look to Little Mew. He never supposed that his father cared
much for him. When the father was ashore he was drunk; when he came to
his senses, and was sober, then he went to sea. Bart sometimes wondered
if his mother thought of him and knew how he was situated.
"She's up in heaven," thought Bart among the hollyhocks, and to Bart
heaven was somewhere among the soft, white clouds, floating like the
wings of big gulls far above the tops of the elms that overhung the roof
of the house and looked down upon this poor little unfortunate. If
earth brought so little happiness, because bringing so little
usefulness, then why was Bart on the earth at all?
"I don't see," he murmured.
The question was a puzzle to him. He was still looking up when he heard
the voice of somebody calling.
"It is somebody at the fence," he said. It was a musical voice, and
Bart wondered if his mother wouldn't call that way. He turned; and what
a sweet face he saw at the fence!--a young lady with sparkling eyes of
hazel, fair complexion, and cheeks that prettily dimpled when she
laughed. He surely thought it must be his mother grown young and come
back to earth again. There was some difference between that face, so
picturesquely bordered with its summer hat, and the puzzled, irregular
features under the old, ragged straw hat that Bart wore.
"Are you the little fellow I heard about that got into the water one
day?" asked the young lady.
"Yes'm," said Bart, pleased to be noticed because he had been in the
water, while thankful to be out of it.
"Well, I'm getting up a Sunday-school class, and I should like very much
to have you in it. Would you like to come?"
"Yes'm," said Bart eagerly, "if--if granny and gran'sir would let me."
"Where are they? You let me ask them."
"She's got a lot of tunes in her voice," thought Bart, eagerly leading
the young lady into the presence of granny and gran'sir.
They were in a flutter at the advent of so much beauty and grace, and
gave a ready permission.
"Now, Bartie--that is your name, I believe--"
"Yes'm."
"I shall expect you next Sunday down at that brick church, Grace Church,
just on the corner of Front Street."
"I know where it is."
"And one thing more. Do you suppose you could get anybody else to
come?" asked the young lady.
"I'll try."
"That's right. Do so. Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
Bart was puzzled to know whom to solicit for the Sunday school.
Gran'sir was so much interested in the young lady that Bart concluded
gran'sir would be willing to go if asked and if well enough; but Bart
concluded that gran'sir was too old, and he said nothing. Sunday
itself, on his way to the church, Bart saw a recruit. It was Dave
Fletcher.
"Oh, you will go with me, won't you? I haven't anybody yet," he said
eagerly.
"What do you mean?" replied the wondering Dave.
"Oh, go to Sunday school with me. I said I would try to bring some
one."
Dave smiled, and Bart interpreted the smile as one half of an assent.
"Oh, do go! I said I would try. And she's real pretty."
"Who? your teacher?"
"Yes."
"Well, that is an inducement. But I am only going to be here a Sunday
or two. My visit is almost over."
"Oh, well, it would please teacher."
Dave smiled again, and this Bart interpreted as the other half of the
assent desired.
"Oh, I am so glad! I'll tell you where it is."
"W-e-l-l! It won't do any harm. I can go as visitor, and I suppose it
would please my family--"
"Family?"
"My father and mother and sister, if they should know I had visited the
Sunday school. Come along! We don't want to be late, you know. I'll be
visitor, and perhaps they will want me to make a speech at the school.
Ha! ha!"
Bart pulled Dave eagerly into the entry of the church, and then looked
through the open door into the room where he knew the Sunday school met;
for Bart had been a visitor once in that very same place.
"Oh, I see teacher," thought Bart, spying his friend in a seat not far
from the door. Her back was turned toward him, but he had not forgotten
the pretty summer hat with its fluttering ribbons of blue. Dave, with a
smile, followed the little fellow, who was timorously conveying his
prize to the waiting young lady. She looked up as Bart exclaimed,
"Here, teacher! I've got one."
[Illustration: "'Here, teacher! I've got a recruit.'" _Page 63._]
"Why, Dave," she exclaimed, "where did you come from?"
"Annie--this you?" he said. The two began to laugh. Bart in surprise
looked at them.
"This is my sister, Bart," explained Dave. "Ha! ha!"
That beautiful young lady and the big boy who had saved him sister and
brother? He might have guessed such a friend as Dave would have such a
sister as this nice young lady. She was visiting at Uncle Ferguson's.
"You see, Dave, when I began my visit I did not expect to teach while
here; but I met the minister, Mr. Porter, and he said he wished I would
start another class for him in his Sunday school and teach it while
here, and I could not say no; and went to work, and have been picking up
my class. I didn't happen to tell you."
The Rev. Charles Porter, at this time the clergyman at Grace Church, was
an old friend of the Fletcher family. Meeting Annie in the streets of
Shipton, and knowing what valuable material there was in the young lady,
he desired to set her to work at once; and when her stay in town might
be over, he could, as he said, "find a teacher, somebody to continue to
open the furrow that she had started."
Dave enjoyed the situation.
"I will play that I am superintendent, Annie, and have come to inspect
your class, and will sit here while you teach."
"I don't know about allowing you to stay here, sir, unless you become a
member of the class and answer my questions, Dave."
Annie was relieved of the presence of this inspector; for a gentleman at
the head of a class opposite, noticing a big boy among Annie's flock of
little fellows, kindly invited Dave to sit with his older lads.
"I am Mr. Tolman," said the gentleman. "Make yourself at home among the
boys."
"Thank you, sir," said Dave; and his sister, with a roguish smile, bowed
him out of her class.
That Sunday was an eventful day to Little Mew. It was pleasant any way
to be near this young lady, who seemed to him to be some beautiful being
from a sphere above the human kind in which he moved. And then Bart was
interested in the subject Annie presented. She talked about heaven and
its people. She talked about God; but she did not make him that far-off
being that Bart thought he must be, so that the louder people prayed the
quicker they would bring him. She told how near he was, all about us,
so that we could seem to hear his voice in the pleasant wind, and feel
his touch in the soft, warm sunshine.
"But--but," said Bart, "he seems to be behind a curtain. I don't see
him."
And then the teacher, her voice to Bart's ear playing a sweeter tune
than ever, told how God took away the curtain; how he came in the Lord
Jesus Christ; that the Saviour was the divine expression of God's love;
and men could see that love going about their streets, coming into their
homes, healing their sick, and then hanging on the cross that the world
might be brought to God. Bart had been told all this before, but
somehow it never got so near him.
"What she says somehow gets into me," thought Bart, looking up into the
teacher's face. He thought he would like to ask her one question when
he was alone with her. The school was dismissed, and Bart lingered that
he might walk away with the teacher.
"Could I ask you about something?" he said, trotting at her side and
lifting his queer, oldish face towards her.
"Certainly; ask all the questions you want. I can't say that I can
answer them, but there's no harm in asking them."
"Well, what am I in this world for?"
He said it so abruptly that it amused Annie.
"What are you in this world for?"
"Yes'm. I don't seem to amount to much."
Bart eagerly watched the face above him, that had suddenly grown
serious; for Annie was thinking of the little fellow's home--of its
unattractiveness, of the two old people there that seemed so
uninteresting, especially the grandfather, who, as Annie recalled him,
seemed to be only a compound of a whining voice, a gloomy face, a bad
cough, and a clumsy cane. Then she recalled the slighting way in which
she heard people speak of this odd little fellow, who seemed to be a
figure out of place in life's problem; one who seemed to run into life's
misfortunes, not waiting that they might run into him--one ill-adjusted
and awry. Well, what should she say? She thought in silence. Then she
stopped him, and looked down into his face.
Bart never forgot it. It was as if all of heaven's beautiful angels she
had told about that day were looking at him through her face, and all of
heaven's beautiful voices were speaking in her tones.
"Bart," she said, "the great reason why you are in this world is
because--God loves you."
What? He wanted to think that over.
"Because what?" he said.
"Why, Bart," she said, "God is a Father--a great, dear Father."
Bart began to think he was; but he had been getting his idea of God
through gran'sir's style of religion, and God seemed more like a judge
or a big police-officer--catching up people and always marching them off
to punishment.
"God is a great, dear Father," the tuneful voice was saying, "and he
wants somebody to love him; and the more people he makes, the more there
are to love him, or should be, and so he made you. But oh, if we don't
love him, it disappoints and grieves him!"
"Does it?" said Bart, thoughtfully, soberly.
"When you are at home--alone, upstairs--you tell God how you feel about
it, just as you would tell your mother--"
"Or teacher," thought Bart.
"As you would tell your mother if she were on the earth."
That day, all alone hi his diminutive chamber, kneeling by a little bed
whose clothing was all too scanty in cold weather, a boy told God he
wanted to love him. When Bart rose from his knees he said to himself,
"Now, I must try to love other people."
He went downstairs. Gran'sir was lying on a hard old lounge, making
believe that he was trying to read his Bible, and at the same time he
was very sleepy. Bart hesitated, and then said,--
"Gran'sir, don't you--you--want me to get you a pillow and put under
your head?"
"Oh, that's a nice little boy!" said the weary old grandfather, when his
head dropped on the soft pillow now covering the hard arm of the lounge.
"And, gran'sir, I ain't much on readin'; but perhaps, if you'd let me, I
might read something, you know."
"Oh, that's a dear little feller," said gran'sir, closing his eyes, so
old and tired. He had been trying to read about Jacob and the angels at
Beth-el; but the lounge was so tough that the feature of the story
gran'sir seemed to appreciate most sensibly was that Jacob slept on a
pillow of stones. I can't say how much of the story, as Bart read it,
gran'sir heard that day, for he was soon as much lost to the outside
world as tired Jacob was. He had, though, a beautiful dream, he
afterwards told granny. Yes; in his sleep he seemed to see the ladder
with its shining, silver rounds, climbing the sky, and on them were so
many angels, oh, so many angels!
"And, granny," whispered gran'sir, "I was a little startled, for one of
them angels seemed to have Bartie's face. I hope nothin' is goin' to
happen, for I am beginnin' to think we should miss that little chap ever
so much."