All that the mother did after the little man was gone I shall not
pretend to say. I was not there at the time. Had I been there I would
have been obliged to stand with my feet outside and my head within; how
could I have had both head and feet within when there was no room to
stand? But I was not there, and never have been sorry that I was not.
You are not sorry that you were not there? Of course you are not.
'Lisbeth would have been glad not to have been there, I suppose; the
mother herself would have been more comfortable somewhere else, even if
it had been in the street tugging home her bundle of clothes to be
sewed. I was not there at the time, but I am certain that, by the next
morning, the dishes stood in rows, the pans hung on the hooks; the jars
and jams, and pots and kettles, and skillets, and spiders, and spoons,
and dippers, and rollers, and beaters, and boilers, and broilers, and
bundles, and boxes, and baskets, and things of all names and all sizes
were sleeping as sweetly as such necessities ever sleep, in the
cupboards and closets and dangling from the hooks, and the mother was
putting in her needle and pulling it out, and nobody would have imagined
that things had ever been otherwise.
Yet things had been otherwise; we all know they had. Things might have
been otherwise still had not 'Lisbeth's mother been a very decided
mother; a mother who knew how things should be and how they should not
be, and how little children should do and how they should not do, and
how to get disordered things back into order as they should be, and
children who were doing as they should not, for a little while at least,
to do as they should.
She said to 'Lisbeth, as she stood with her two feet on the two places
where the little man had stood: "'Lisbeth, you are a very hindering
child!"
Had she said anything else, anything else at all, 'Lisbeth would not
have felt it so much, she would not have been so entirely lifted out of
herself, out of her own opinion, and made to see herself where her
mother put her, back in the right place where every naughty child
should be put as soon as possible.
'Lisbeth gasped for breath. She looked fiercely up at her mother, and
down at the floor; she looked within herself, and at the ugly picture of
herself which her mother had just showed her. She saw that the picture
was like her, that she was "a hindering child." It was a blow she was
not prepared for. Had her mother said anything more immediately 'Lisbeth
would not have seen so well that the mother's words were true; but she
did not say any more immediately. She stood perfectly still with her
feet in the two places where the little man's feet had been.
'Lisbeth was very uncomfortable when she heard those words repeated;
indeed she was very angry; she looked just as naughty as naughty could
be; she looked like a girl who was cross because somebody was doing
something very wrong to her. Then she did not look as naughty as naughty
could be, she looked disappointed and sorry, and repentant, and humble,
and this was because she saw that she was "a hindering child."
At first she believed that she was a helping, comforting child, now she
saw that she was not. She saw it as we sometimes see a flash of
lightning. 'Lisbeth did not mean to be "a hindering child," but she was
one.
"Why am I a hindering child?" inquired 'Lisbeth when she could catch her
breath.
"Because you work by your own head instead of by mine," said the mother
as she put one foot and then the other forward among the pots and
kettles. But 'Lisbeth stood still in the middle of the floor considering
what her mother meant, and if what she said was true, and if she was
always to work the wrong way instead of the right way, like an engine
which will run back instead of forward; and how long she might have
stood considering, and how long she might have worn such a troubled
face, and how long she might have felt such a lump in her throat, had
not her mother come and stood before her, clearing a place for her feet
as she came, I shall never pretend to say.
But the mother did come and stand before her, and 'Lisbeth put her two
hands in her mother's two hands, and looked up in her mother's face,
into her mother's troubled eyes, and her mother knew that whatever else
she might do, in days to come, she would never again try to move her
before the time. The mother knew this as well as I do, but I know this
and more beside.
As I said before, I do not know exactly all that was done that
afternoon, before the rooms and the mother and 'Lisbeth all grew quiet,
and in place and comfortable, but I know something more important than
this; I know that 'Lisbeth, after she had settled other matters began to
settle her own mind as to the true meaning of her mother's words about
her making use of the wrong head.
She was obliged to think a great deal about it before she was able to
settle it in her mind. It took a very great deal of thinking. How could
she use her mother's head? How can you and I use our mothers' heads? Of
course you know we could do it, how 'Lisbeth could have done it, but
Lisbeth had to think hard about it before she knew. When she had made it
quite sure in her own mind how it was to be done, she came to another
trouble, she was not quite sure that she would like to do it.
She thought a great while as to what she was to do about it; she
thought a great while about it while seated on the three-legged stool
with her face to the wall, and when she had finished thinking about it
she got down from the stool and went and stood before her mother, and
her mother looked up to see what she was standing there for, and then
'Lisbeth said:
"I'm going to try most dreadful hard to use your head; I've made up my
mind to it."
When 'Lisbeth made up her mind to a thing it was made up.
'Lisbeth tried very hard from this time to use the mother's head; and
though the mother used it too it did not get worn out half as fast as it
had done before; it began to look newer--I mean younger--and to look as
though use did it a great deal of good; and 'Lisbeth's head looked the
better for it too--I mean her face looked the better for it--it looked
rested; perhaps I should say it looked better contented than it did
before, it looked more comfortable. In fact, by using the mother's head
very frequently instead of her own, 'Lisbeth improved inside of a week,
and in the two months while they yet remained in London she began to
look like a helping child instead of a hindering one.
When the time came for the packing up to be done 'Lisbeth really helped.
She did; nobody need be astonished. She helped a great deal, and
everybody seemed so happy that the mother laughed a dozen times just in
packing up. This was such a remarkable thing to happen that every one
was astonished; they could not help being astonished.
Mother had not laughed for a great while. It seemed a very strange thing
for her to do. Nobody could quite tell what she was laughing at either
by thinking over it or by inquiring. Dickon inquired, but Dickon could
not understand it any better after he had inquired.
Gorham thought over it. He was older than Dickon, and perhaps should
have been able to understand by thinking over it, but he did not. Gorham
had been in London for some time, and had become accustomed to the two
little rooms at the top of the house, where the walls were so black, and
to the hubbub of voices above and below, and to the tatters on the
little children, and to the dirt and tatters on the grown people; and
had become accustomed to the little boys who were not very nice, or very
comfortable to play with; Gorham had become accustomed to all this and
did not dislike it all as much as he did when he first came to London.
Indeed Gorham was growing a little bit like these little boys; just a
little like them, not very much; I am glad to be able to say that it was
not very much. But at any rate, Gorham could not see why his mother was
laughing when she had not laughed for such a long time; laughing over
her cracked crockery, broken-nosed teapots, and black old crocks. It
never entered his mind that she was laughing because, though she seemed
to be looking at the old crockery, she was looking over and past them
with her mind's eye, to the clover tufts on the dear old fields, and to
the paths winding about the mill, to the spire of the white wooden
church; to the market-place where the mill-hands used to gather together
and chat and talk. Yet she was looking at these and at many things
beside, and not at all at the broken-nosed pots.
'Lisbeth knew better than Gorham or Dickon why it was the mother
laughed. I think she knew a great deal better. I think when she would
put her face down close beside her mother's, and they would both smile
so pleasantly, glancing toward each other and looking away, I think they
were then seeing the same things, the very same things, though they were
both a hundred miles away from the things themselves.
This was very comfortable; so comfortable that Dickon and Gorham smiled
too, though only looking at their two faces and at the iron pots, and
broken noses, and the rubbish which the mother had gathered up. And
indeed, though they could not tell why, they laughed themselves when the
mother laughed, and who knows but perhaps after all they did, without
knowing it, catch glimpses of the far-away things which 'Lisbeth and her
mother were seeing.
Everything was very comfortable all this packing-up time, in fact much
of the two months before it.
Now I do not intend you to suppose, when I say that everything was very
comfortable, that everything was in order in those two rooms, that
everything was fixed up; that the iron pots were full of cookies or of
all kinds of cookeries; that the crockery was full of good things; that
the black walls had been whitened; not a bit of it. Things had changed;
things had changed very much. The faces had changed.
The mother's face and 'Lisbeth's had altered more than Dickon's and
Gorham's, but their being altered I think had changed Dickon's and
Gorham's too. Do you know what had changed them? Why, 'Lisbeth had made
up her mind to try to be contented and to use her mother's head. She was
so much more pleasant looking that you would have been surprised at the
change.
You have seen her before this, with your mind's eye, I know; that is,
you have imagined how she might have looked, and you have always seen
her looking as though she was dissatisfied; as though she was wishing
for something she had not; as though she was trying to think of
something to do, or somewhere to go, as though she was about to make use
of her own head contrary to that of her mother. But now she looked more
cheerful and comfortable; indeed like a different girl entirely. You
see she made up her mind to be a different girl entirely, and to try to
work by her mother's head, and when 'Lisbeth made up her mind about
anything we know that it was made up.
'Lisbeth had improved very much. Yet she was 'Lisbeth; 'Lisbeth working
a great deal by her mother's head instead of by her own.
Beside this 'Lisbeth had a pleasant prospect before her; a very pleasant
prospect indeed. She did not very often lose sight of this prospect; I
mean the prospect of going a hundred miles from London. She looked so
much more pleasant than formerly that you would not think, at sight of
her, "there is a girl who is not satisfied in the place where she is
growing, or with the things she finds around her; she looks
uncomfortable."
I think that 'Lisbeth was better contented the last weeks she lived in
London than during any week of her life, except the week before she came
to London. Her contentment had changed everything very much; as I said,
it had changed the faces; the faces were changed because everybody felt
happier. Things were very different in those two rooms because 'Lisbeth
was different.
For two whole months they were getting ready to go away; they were
working and saving and wondering and smiling and laughing and hoping
before they left the dreadful old rooms, but then they were such
different months from all the others spent there that they were short
months; that is, they seemed short.
The boys were happier when their mother and 'Lisbeth were bright and
happy; their mother was happy when her children were good and wore
bright faces. 'Lisbeth wore a bright face when she tried to be content
with things as she found them, and did not run about the streets of
London trying to sell gingerbread cats and dogs and doll-babies, trying
to earn pence with sweeping streets or pulling wires, or making wigs. So
as everybody was happier than they had been the months seemed short.
Who cared that the walls were black and the rooms little and the street
too little to be called a street? Nobody.
All the difference came by 'Lisbeth's having made up her mind to be
contented to help mother in mother's way instead of her own way; by
'Lisbeth's having made up her mind to mix her earnestness with her
mother's judgment.
They left the little dark rooms, in the dirty old house, and all the
shows, and people, and carriages and houses of London, and went back
where they first grew, back to the very house under the walnut tree
where the bits of the hogshead still blew about--the hogshead which had
once opened its mouth.
The mother went again to work at the mill, and the children all went to
Miss Pritchet's school, and 'Lisbeth picked beans, and helped take care
of Trotty, and of the house, and helped mother so much, that mother
began to look bright and happy and smiling like somebody else. In fact,
'Lisbeth looked bright and happy, and smiling, herself, like somebody
else, and when she would sit on the mile-stone she would smile more than
ever in thinking what a little goose she had been ever to want to go so
many miles away; and, indeed, so happy and contented did she become
with the work she found to do in the place in which she grew, that you
would never have known her to be 'Lisbeth.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Obvious punctuation errors have been corrected.
Blank pages have been removed.
On page 42 "unreasonble" has been changed to "unreasonable"
(... thought him unreasonable enough, ...)
On page 50 "disparingly" has been changed to "dispairingly" (... said
'Lisbeth a little despairingly.)
On page 84 "a doing" has been changed to "a-doing". (You must be up
and a-doing, ..)
On page 27 the word "flim" has been retained.