A DAY OF PLEASURE.
IT was an unusually warm day in June, and Ruth had dismissed her
scholars early on that account. She stood by the window plucking the
dried leaves off the climbing rose, and thinking how delightful the
approaching vacation would be, when a little hand touched her. Looking
down she found Philip by her side.
"And what will mamma say at having no little boy at home?" she asked,
drawing him nearer, and smoothing back his wavy hair.
"O, mamma knows. She only said I must not trouble you. I guess I
wouldn't do that, though, because I love you too much."
Here the little hand tried to give Ruth's a great squeeze, while such an
effort brought color to the pale cheeks. Not only that, but it brought
something he wanted very much, a kiss.
"You always kiss me for telling you that, Miss Ruth, and so does mamma.
What do you do it for? Do you like little boys to love you?"
"You have not told me how much you love me," was the laughing reply. "I
cannot answer questions till I know all about them."
"O, I love you more than all the world, except my mamma;--isn't that
_ever_ so much?"
"Yes, that is a great deal. Then you don't love any one but your mamma
and me?"
"I love God," and the earnest eyes were fixed on the blue clouds. "Would
you like to be up there, Miss Ruth? Mamma reads about it for me. I
should like to go up there and see it. I should like to see God, too,
but I would come back again, you know. Mamma always cries and hugs me
when I say that; just as if I would stay away from mamma and you. I
guess I wouldn't. But I would see all the beautiful things the Bible
says are there, and then I would draw pretty pictures. Mamma says there
is a house up there for us all, and some day we will go and stay there.
Do you want to go, Miss Ruth?"
"Yes, some day," she replied; but there was no kindling of the eye, no
joy of soul at the thought, for Ruth knew that her earthly love was
stronger and more absorbing than the heavenly. "There, now, we will go
and see about Miss Agnes's dinner," she added, glad to divert his
thoughts.
"Miss Agnes has not come, Martha?" she inquired.
"No, ma'am. I have been watching for her. She will be awful hot, I
think."
"You are Miss Agnes's little girl, and I am Miss Ruth's little boy,
aren't we?" asked the child.
"I am Miss Ruth's, too," said Martha, decidedly.
"Yes, but you love Miss Agnes best."
"I love both just the same--only different; but Miss Agnes was my
teacher."
Ruth gave such a quick look, that the child drew back frightened,
thinking she was angry; but she smiled at her, and Martha's fear left
her. How much a smile will do, and what a very little word or act will
bring that smile. So when Agnes came home "awful hot," as Martha said,
she was met by smiling faces, and waited on by loving hands, and finally
it ended in a "real party," for they all had strawberries and cream, to
keep Miss Agnes company.
"Isn't he a darling," whispered Agnes, glancing toward Philip, who was
intent on his strawberries.
"Yes, he is a remarkable child; his mother must be very fond of him. I
have been planning something to-day, Agnes, for all hands," looking
round at the children, as she spoke.
"What?" asked her sister, brightening.
"I can't tell you until we are alone. But it will bring the roses to
somebody's cheeks, and be very nice for all the somebodies."
"Don't let us do any thing this afternoon, but talk or read," proposed
Agnes; and hearing this, Philip hurried to the school-room for his own
little chair, so that he might lay his head on Ruth's lap and listen.
But _Christus Consolator_ was too profound, and lulled by the sound of
Agnes's sweet voice, and Ruth's caressing touch, he slept.
"When the sun goes down it is time for little birds to be in their
nests," said Ruth, and Philip now wide awake and knowing what was to
follow, ran to tell Martha to get her hat. The first time he had staid,
Ruth sent word to his mother that she would take him home, and ever
since it had been understood.
"One on one side, and one on the other," he said, as he placed himself
between Ruth and Agnes, offering a hand to each. But Ruth asked what was
to become of poor Martha, and soon the two children were talking as
gravely, and looking as demurely side by side, as if they had been
grandfather and grandmother.
On their way home, while Martha walked before, Ruth developed her idea,
which was that they should have a pic-nic, perhaps several of them
during vacation, "as it would be so expensive to go away for a length of
time you know. Just a family affair," she continued, "and we will take
the children along to enliven us."
Agnes fell in with the plan very readily, and pictures of ferns, mosses
and lichens at once rose before her delighted vision.
There were trying days still to be passed in the school-room, days on
which Ruth felt it would be a relief to scream out or do something
desperate. But when she looked at the little ones under her care, trying
to be good and obedient while under control, she chided herself for her
impatience, at the same time relaxing her discipline. But the days went
by and the holidays came, and Miss Ruth's joy at her freedom was not one
bit less than her pupils'; though she didn't run screaming to tell every
one that "school was broken up." "We might as well go soon, Ruth. I feel
as if I could scarcely breathe here," said Agnes, a few days after
school had closed.
"A day won't help you much if you are in that state. What shall you do
all the other warm days?"
"Imagine I am in the woods," was the laughing reply.
"Then you had better bring your imagination to bear upon it now. Guy
will have to dine down town that day. I fancy he will not like it very
well, for he is so fastidious. Guy was certainly meant to be rich."
"Why not ask him to go with us?" suggested Agnes.
"If you want to be laughed at you will. Imagine our Guy going with two
women, two children, and a lot of baskets, to spend a day in the woods!"
"I should think he might enjoy the change quite as much as we. But men
are queer, they look upon women's pleasures as childish, I really
believe."
The day before the pic-nic every one was busy; even Philip insisted
upon helping. When Guy came to dinner there was such an air of commotion
that he at once inquired the cause.
"What's up, girls? house-cleaning? If that's the case, I'm off; no
soap-suds and white-wash for me."
"Hear him; house-cleaning in July!" exclaimed Agnes.
"I do believe, Guy, you men would never do a bit of cleaning all your
lives, if you were house keepers."
"You may bet on that," was the reply. "That is just where we would show
our good sense."
"Your filthy habits, you mean."
"Well, either, whichever suits you. But you haven't said what was in the
wind."
"None came this way to-day, we could not tell."
"We are going to close the house to-morrow, Guy, so you need not come
home to dinner. We intend going to the woods to find fresh air."
But Guy didn't like the idea; it sounded common, he thought. Every day
he met a lot of women and their babies, with a parcel of brats following
them, going over the river or somewhere. "Why can't you take a week each
of you, and go to the country like other people?"
That, "like other people," was too much for Ruth, and she said, sharply:
"We can't be what we are not. Beggars must not be choosers."
Guy replied in as sharp a tone that "some people liked to make a parade
of their poverty," and finished his dinner in silence. This unfortunate
affair threw a damper over the girls, but the children did not come
within the shadow of the cloud. Ruth had a sudden angry impulse not to
go at all, scarcely knowing why, as it would not spite her brother. But
she could not yield to such a thought when the happiness of Agnes and
the children was to be considered.
Agnes spoke very little after the occurrence, knowing what state of mind
Ruth was in, but she sang in a low voice some of her sister's favorite
hymns, and in a little while the cloud rolled away, the sun came out,
and the storm was all over. By tea-time Guy and Ruth were as if nothing
unpleasant had happened, but there was no allusion made to the pic-nic.
"I wonder how people feel who are going on an extended tour," said
Agnes, as they filled their lunch baskets.
"That depends very much upon the people themselves," replied Ruth. "This
little trip is giving us more real pleasure than some people would know
in travelling all over the globe."
"Yes, I suppose so; it is the appreciation that is needed, and without
that there can be no enjoyments."
Fortunately, for Guy, he did not see the party set out the next morning,
or the shock might so completely have overcome him as to unfit him for
any business whatever. But they waited until he had gone, and then they
started with their baskets, trowel, and garden-fork.
"People will take us for herb-gatherers, and think these are our
children," said Agnes, gaily.
"Shocking!" exclaimed Ruth, with mock earnestness.
They took the boat for several miles down the river, to the great
delight of the children, especially Philip, whose keen eyes took in the
smallest white speck of a sail, and then when they had climbed a very
little hill, and gone down a big one, they were in the woods.
"What a delightful perfume! Isn't it charming!" exclaimed Agnes,
delightedly, as she sat down by a tree to "enjoy herself." But the
children who had been scampering about, declared there was a much nicer
place not far off, and so Miss Agnes, who could imagine no scene more
charming, very reluctantly consented to tear herself away.
The spot chosen by the children was indeed lovely. Perfectly level
ground covered with the richest moss, out of which rose broad flat
rocks, and along side of which, not many yards distant, ran a clear
little stream on whose banks the feathery fern grew, and into which it
dipped its graceful frond. On the other side of the stream the wood was
more dense, but through it a broad path led to a bend in the river.
"We need go no farther," exclaimed both Ruth and Agnes. "Nothing could
exceed this for loveliness and shade.
"By the river of Babylon there we sat down," and Agnes once more settled
herself.
"There we hung our harps upon the willows," added Ruth, throwing her
shawl on a branch overhead. "Now, Agnes, let us take it easy and make
the most of the day, for such days will be like angel's visits."
"Well, suppose we rest first. Methinks I could forget myself in sleep."
Presently Ruth was accosted with, "I think I know now what I should do
if I were rich."
"What?" she asked.
"Take sick people into the country. That is, if I could afford to keep a
carriage. I have been thinking about it since yesterday."
Ruth knew what had brought it to her mind. Guy's picture of the women
and their babies; sick, of course.
"Yes," she said. "Many of those who die every year might become strong
and well again, if they could be taken from the close, stifling air of
their wretched homes into that which is pure and fresh."
"Nothing could give greater pleasure than to have these poor, emaciated
babies and wan-faced women look up at you with a smile, as if saying, 'O
how this cheers us.' I wonder if it will ever be?"
"'Tis hard to tell," was the reply. "But suppose you had a carriage,
your husband might object to your using it in this way."
"Then I should not use it at all." Here Agnes looked as if at that time
rejecting its use.
Ruth laughed. "Wait, my dear, until you get it," she said. "Or before
you give yourself away, it would be well to ask the gentleman, if, in
case you owned such a thing, you could use it for such purposes."
"Not I indeed. No man ever finds me asking him such a question; what was
_his_ would be mine. But I shall know, when I see the man, what manner
of spirit he is of."
This occasioned another laugh, in which Agnes joined, and the two,
banishing the thoughts of sick babies and pale-faced women, had a gay
time. In the meantime, the children had scrambled over rocks to gather
lichen, and dug holes deep enough to bury a kitten in, in their efforts
to get moss; they had sailed little nut-shell boats down the stream, and
in the many ways that children have enjoyed themselves. Everybody was
hungry of course, so by the time Agnes was ready for her ferns, there
were empty baskets in which to place them. But they read and talked
before that, and walked through the woods on the other side out to the
river, finding several beautiful plants on their way. Then at the last
the ferns were gathered, and Agnes did wish they could have had more
baskets. But Ruth informed her she might have gone home by herself if
she had.
"Now that is my idea of enjoying oneself," said Agnes, as tired but very
happy, she laid her head on her pillow.
"Yes, that is rational, sensible enjoyment," replied Ruth. "I wish
sensible people would have the moral courage to act sensibly in this
matter of rest and recreation. But it would shock a great many quite as
much as it did Guy. Now I think it is well and often necessary for
persons to have a more decided change, when their health requires it,
and their means will allow. But this thing of going to fashionable
resorts, for the sake of appearance, spending hundreds of dollars in
mere dissipation; coming home envious and dissatisfied at the greater
show made by others, instead of seeking change for the good of it, at
the same time having their hearts drawn out after those less fortunate,
is to me one of the greatest evils of the day."
[Illustration: Decoration]