HIS STORY INTERRUPTED
[Illustration: GRETA'S MEDITATIONS.]
ONE Sunday morning Greta tripped across to Rufus to ask him to take her
to church.
"Mother isn't well, and Becca is going to stay at home with her. I
don't like going alone: may I go with you?"
"I wasn't thinking of going this morning," Rufus responded; "it is too
lovely a day to be cooped up within four walls; but I'll come with you,
if you like."
She waited till he had donned his Sunday coat, and then trotted
contentedly by his side up the country lane leading to the old village
church.
"Do you like going to church?" she asked, presently.
"I don't know that I do. One goes from force of habit generally. It is
a mere form to me."
"What is a form? A wooden seat without a back, isn't it? You don't like
the seats, I s'pose?"
Rufus laughed.
"What takes you to church, Greta?"
Greta's face assumed a sweet, serious air.
"To meet God," she replied, softly. "It's rather a long time to sit
still, but I like to sing and listen to the organ; and in the sermon I
look about for God."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Well, I like to look up high in the roof till I fancy He is looking
down; and when I seem to know He is there, I just speak to Him a little
in a whisper, you know. I don't mean say my prayers; but I tell Him
little things that Becca wouldn't call proper if I put them in my
prayers."
"What kind of things?"
Greta did not answer for a moment, and Rufus, looking down upon the
sweet little face felt an awe as he realized that this tiny child had
no difficulty in holding communion with the Almighty God, the Creator
of the Universe.
When she spoke again, it was in very sober accents.
"We have had a death in our family to-day."
Rufus looked startled.
"Not any near relation, I hope?"
"He was a very dear friend—Peter—my canary. He was ill yesterday, but
I thought he was sulky. He wouldn't eat his food, and this morning I
found him quite dead at the bottom of his cage. I cried dreadfully,
for I loved him next best to our cat 'Toodles.' Peter was so good; he
would always sing to me when I chirped to him, even if it wasn't a
sunny day, and it must be difficult to sing when one is dull, and it is
raining and people are very grave round one. I'm sure Peter was a bird
who tried to live for others, and please them and cheer them up. Mother
often used to say, 'I wonder what makes him so happy?' Becca says you
can often sing yourself into a good humor, if you try, but I've never
heard her sing."
"I should not think she carries her precepts into practice," said
Rufus, with a grim smile. "You wouldn't call her a person whose aim in
life was to please other people and cheer them up!"
"Well," said Greta, gravely; "she told me once you mustn't go by
outside looks. Some people are born into the world with grave faces,
and some with sunny ones, and you can't alter your looks. It is the
heart, she says, and your motives and pinnacles that are the important
thing!"
"Motives and principles," murmured Rufus, smiling.
Greta did not notice his correction, and went on: "I suppose there are
hardly any people who only live to please themselves, are there, Mr.
Tracy?"
"A good many, I think. And after all, why should we not? If we are
single men and women with no family ties, who is there to think of
except ourselves?"
"I thought God told us in the Bible we weren't to do it," said Greta a
little shyly. "Becca is always saying it to me—'For none of us liveth
to himself.'"
"Oh, well, if we gauged our life by the Bible, I suppose the world
would be a different place," said Rufus, lightly. "Is that your motto,
Greta? I fancy your training is leading you that way."
"No, I'm always wanting to please myself, but I do try to help Becca
dust our room and wash up the things instead of playing with Toodles
first. When I grow up I shall find it quite easy to live for others,
shan't I? It's only when you want to play or have a run, instead of
sitting still that it's so difficult; I s'pose all children can't help
being naughty sometimes, but of course grown-up people never are."
Rufus flicked off some heads of dandelions with his cane without
replying. The child continued with a quick change of thought, "I'm
going just to tell God in church to-day about Peter. Do you think He
will feel sorry?"
"I should think so," replied Rufus, absently, and having reached the
church by this time, the conversation was at an end, but the young man
was occupied with more serious thoughts than usual during the service.
It was not long after this, that Rufus was sent on a confidential
mission to London by his chief. He departed suddenly, and thought it
would only be an absence of a couple of days, but three weeks elapsed
before he was able to return.
He looked out for his little friend on her way to school the next
morning, but was astonished to see no sign of her. The house opposite
seemed silent and deserted. As he sat down to dinner in the evening he
asked his landlady if she had seen anything of her.
"Oh, sir! I was about to tell yer! The poor lady died awful sudden two
days after you left. She allays had bin a sufferer, but they didn't
think the end so near. And the nurse and child left a week arter the
funeral. She allays were a proud stuck up creature was that nurse—and
kep' it wonderful close where she was agoin' to, and what she was
agoin' to do! Why, Mrs. Green, she says to me herself, that she had her
head nearly snapped off, when she asked the most innercent question
about the poor little lamb! And she's to be pitied the little dear with
such a tartar a carryin' her off, and she not allowed to come across
and even wish me good-bye! And I seed her little white sad face as they
were druv off in a cab, and she rekernized me and blew me a kiss with
a ghost of a smile. Bliss her little heart! We shall miss her trottin'
across, sir, shan't us?"
"Was Mrs. Clay buried here?" asked Rufus, too bewildered at first to
take it all in.
"Yes, sir, in the village churchyard. Our clergyman were backward
and forward a good bit at the time. There didn't seem no friends nor
relatives at the funeral—just a gentleman in black who looked very
stern and 'aughty; but he left d'rectly arterward, and he might 'a' bin
the lawyer, though I did hear she had nought to leave, poor lady, and
it's my belief they was pressed for hunger at the time, from what Mrs.
Green have told me!"
Rufus dismissed his landlady rather abruptly. To the lonely young
fellow, the little child had come as a ray of sunshine; not only
bringing a fresh interest into his life, but awakening better feelings
and creating higher aims in his soul by her simple faith in God and His
Word. He felt bereft without her, and recalled his last conversation
with her on the road to school.
"You will be back next Saturday, won't you, Mr. Tracy? And we will go
to the woods and take our tea with us. I shall feel quite funny walking
to school alone again."
"Will you miss me, Greta?"
She had looked up at him with a serious smile. "I shall not always
have you, shall I? When I get bigger and go away from here, I shall
be accustomed to walk alone. Becca says it is only the weak sickly
trees that want props, a healthy one can grow alone. She says I must
go through life without props. Do you think you're a kind of prop, Mr.
Tracy? If you are, I think props are very nice, but when I am grown-up
I suppose I shan't want you."
"I hope you will never cast off old friends, Greta."
And then the soft eyes had filled with tears, and she slipped her tiny
hand into his.
"I've never had such a friend like you, so good and big and strong, and
I'll never forget you if I am a hundred years old, but you won't be
long away, will you? And you'll come back very soon."
And now—when should they meet again? Had they already drifted apart in
the wide world, and would the sweet, old-fashioned child become only a
pleasant memory of a little bit of the road in his life's journey?
With these thoughts he wandered out in the summer dusk to the little
village churchyard.
He had no difficulty in recognizing the grave: a fresh mound of earth
at the foot of an old yew tree, with some faded bluebells placed in
the centre was all that was left to mark the last resting-place of
poor Mrs. Clay. Rufus stooped and gently detached one of the little
faded bluebells. He knew the dell in the wood that they came from,
and pictured a lonely little figure in a black frock stealing away
under the thickly hanging trees, to sob out her desolation amongst her
favorite flowers.
"Poor little mite, fatherless and motherless, and only that she-dragon
with a face and heart of stone, to turn to for sympathy or comfort. I
wonder what will become of her! Will her future life continue to be one
of such dreary hardship and stern surroundings at that to which she has
always been accustomed!"
Then with a sigh and a smile he placed the bluebell in his pocketbook
with the muttered words, "Good-bye to my first courtship! We have
drifted apart as suddenly as we met!"