All service ranks the same with God;
If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work.
—Robert Browning.
In large black letters the word Post Office stared down the Bensalem
street from the end door of a small white house. A plump lady in gray
pushed open the door; the bell over the door sharply announced her
entrance; she stepped into the tiny room; straight before her a door
was shut, at her right were rows of glass pigeonholes with numerals
pasted upon them; no head was visible at the window the pigeonholes
surrounded; while she stood ready to tap upon the closed door that led
into the sitting-room, the sound of a horn clear and loud gave her a
start and betrayed her into a quick exclamation: “Why, deary me. What
next?”
“Come in here, come in here,” called a shaky voice from the other side
of the closed door.
She pushed the door open, to be confronted by the figure of an old man
lying in bed with a tin horn in his hand.
“Come right in, Miss Affy,” the old man said cheerfully; “I’ve got one
of my dreadful rheumatic days and can’t twist myself out of bed; I’ve
had my bed down here for a week now. I’ve got all the mail in bed with
me. Sarah had to go out and milk and feed the chickens, so she brought
the few letters and papers that were left over in here for me to take
care of. Doctor says I’ll be about in a week or so, if he can keep the
fever down. I never had rheumatic _fever_ before. Nobody comes this
time of day for letters. Nothing happens about five o’clock excepting
feeding the chickens. Sarah milks earlier than most folks so as to
tend the mail, when the stage gets in. She went out earlier than usual
to-day because she forgot the little chickens at noon. She just put
her head in to say she had taken a new brood off. Do sit down a
minute. Didn’t Mr. Brush tell you I had rheumatic fever? Sarah must
have told him when he came for his paper, night before last. She tells
everybody. I blew the horn to call Sarah in, but I don’t believe
she’ll come until she gets ready. The mail doesn’t mean anything to
her excepting getting our pay regular. There’s all the letters on the
foot of the bed; you can pick yours out. Sarah said you had a letter,
and she guessed it was from your niece, Mrs. Mackenzie, or her little
girl. Yes, that’s it. Mr. Brush’s paper is there, too.”
The plump lady in gray, with a long gray curl behind each ear, picked
among the letters and papers at the foot of the untidy bed, and found
a letter in a pretty hand addressed to Miss Affy S. Sparrow, and a
newspaper bearing the printed label, Cephas Brush.
“That is all,” remarked the Bensalem postmaster; “never mind fixing
them straight; I get uneasy and tumble them around.”
“I will sit here and read the letter, if I may.”
“Oh, yes, do. I haven’t heard any news to-day.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t brought you any,” said Miss Affy, “and you will
not care for my letter.”
“Oh, yes, I shall,” he answered, eagerly. “I was wishing I could read
all the letters to amuse me. I did read Mr. Brush’s paper. I tucked it
all back smooth; I knew he wouldn’t care.”
“He will call and bring you papers,” promised Miss Affy, tearing open
the envelope with a hair-pin.
“I wish he _would_. And a book, too. I wanted Sarah to take my book
back to the library to-day, and get another to read to-night if I
can’t sleep, but she said she hadn’t time; and, she can’t now, because
there’s supper and the mail coming in,” he groaned. “I had an awful
night last night; and if it hadn’t been for ‘Tempest and Sunshine,’ I
don’t know how I should have got through it.”
“That was enough for one night,” laughed the lady at the window
reading the letter. “I will try to find you something better than that
for to-night.”
“Will you go to the library for me? That’s just like you, Miss Affy.”
“Yes, I will go. If I cannot find anything I like I will call
somewhere else. There should be books enough in Bensalem to help you
through the night.”
“Is your letter satisfactory?” he questioned, curiously, as she
slipped it back into the envelope.
“Mrs. Mackenzie is very feeble; she wishes to come to Bensalem for the
change, and asks me to go and bring her and Judith.”
“But you and Miss Rody will not want the trouble of sick folks.”
“We want _her_,” said Miss Affy, rising; “I will leave your book in
the post-office, Mr. Gunn, so you need not blow the horn when you hear
me open the door.”
“But it may not be _you_; how shall I know?”
“True enough. Blow your horn, then.”
“You can _look_ in if it’s you, and Sarah isn’t there.”
“Where is the book to take back?”
“‘Tempest and Sunshine.’ Oh, Sarah hasn’t finished it yet. I forgot
that,” he said disappointedly. “She read it yesterday and gave me
nothing but bread and milk for supper, and I wanted pork and eggs. She
was on it long enough to finish,” he grumbled.
“No matter, then. I’ll get one for myself. It will be the first book I
have taken from the library.”
“And you such a reader, too. How many magazines do you take? I’d like
some of your old magazines while I’m laid up.”
“Mr. Brush will bring you a big bundle. But I will go to the library
now, for he may not wish to bring them to-night.”
The school library was kept at the house of one of the school
trustees; the errand gave Miss Affy another quarter of a mile to walk,
and it also gave her the opportunity of a call upon Nettie Evans,
whose small home was next door to the school-library. Cephas Brush had
told her that she knew how to kill more birds with one stone than any
woman he knew.
She walked past the syringa bushes of the school trustee’s front yard,
and knocked on the front door with the big brass knocker; there was no
response excepting the sound of rubbing and splash of water that came
through the open kitchen window. Miss Affy knocked the second time
with more determined fingers. It was a pity to take Mrs. Finch from
her washing, but it would be more of a pity to let that old man toss
in pain and groan for a book to read. As she gave the second knock she
wondered if his lamp were safely arranged, and if the reading by
lamp-light did not injure his eyes; she would look for a book with
good type.
The kitchen door was quickly opened, a woman with rolled-up sleeves
and dripping, par-boiled fingers called out pleasantly: “Why don’t you
come to this door?”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Finch,” said Miss Affy, walking past another syringa
bush, “I came to the Circulating Library.”
“The Circulating Library is where I am. I keep it in the kitchen,
because I cannot circulate about my work to attend it,” replied Mrs.
Finch, extending a hospitable wet hand; “You see I’m late to-day;
usually my washing is all out at eleven o’clock. But his folks came to
dinner, three of them, unexpectedly—Monday, too, and I had to spring
around and cook a dinner; the Sunday left-overs wouldn’t do. They
didn’t leave the house until half-past two, so I had to leave the
dinner dishes, piled them up in the shed, under a pan, and put on my
boiler again. It don’t often happen, and I put a good face on it.”
“You turn a very cheery face toward life, Mrs. Finch.”
“Well, I try to. It’s all I’ve got to give anyway;” Mrs. Finch
replied, removing the cover from the boiler and poking at the clothes
with a long clothes-stick; the steam rolled out the door and windows;
as the room was cleared, Miss Affy discovered a high mahogany bureau
with brass rings, the top of which was covered with books in neat
piles.
“You are welcome to look at the books and take one. I wish you
_would_ sit down, Miss Affy, I can talk while I work. I wish I might
stay and wash the dishes for you.”
Miss Affy prayed every day, “Use me, Lord, any way, any where.”
“With that dress on?” said Mrs. Finch, regarding the new spring suit
with favor. “I couldn’t help looking at you in church, if it _was_
Sunday, and thinking that you looked sweet enough to be a bride.”
“Thank you. I am fond of this dress,” replied Miss Affy in her simple,
sweet way.
“When you are married, you must be married in gray. I was married in
white. Thirty years ago.”
“I remember it,” said Miss Affy, “Cephas and I were there.”
“Don’t think about the dishes. It’s just like you.”
“I would more than think about them, but I must call on Nettie, and
then I promised to read awhile to Mrs. Trembly; she is more blind than
she was, and Agnes breaks her heart because she cannot find more time
to read to her and amuse her.”
“They should come before dishes. People first, I say. That’s why I’m
behind with my washing. People first, I say to Jonas, and he looks
scornful. But it will pay some day.”
“You have not a catalogue?”
“A seed catalogue? We’ve never had a call for that. I thought
everybody had one.”
“So we have, dozens. I meant a catalogue of the books. I would like to
know what our boys and girls are reading.”
“Grown people, too. Everybody reads the books. Every time Mr. Gunn is
laid up he is crazy for books. Look them over; lots of them are out.
No matter how you put them back, if you only pile them up.”
“But you have a book in which to put down my name and the number of
the book I take.”
“Oh, no; take any you like. I couldn’t be bothered that way. We expect
new books. The last entertainment the school children had was to raise
money for books. We don’t get anything for keeping the books, but
Jonas is the greatest reader that ever was; he has read them all. But
I never have time. I don’t know what is in any of them.”
“Your husband knows. I am glad he reads them. Our young people must be
taken care of. Books have been everything to me. These books are an
influence in Bensalem.”
“I hope so,” replied the keeper of the books, not thinking for an
instant that they could be otherwise than a good influence.
“Excuse me if I go on with my work; that is the last boiler-full.”
“I would not stay if I interrupted you,” said Miss Affy. “I may take
considerable time, for I want to know what our boys and girls are
reading. I know every book in the Sunday-school library, but I had
forgotten that Bensalem boasted a public school library.”
After a half-hour’s search, Miss Affy’s choice was made; the type of
the book was not large enough for the old man’s reading at night, but
the story was excellent: “Samuel Budget, the Successful Merchant.”
“I’m sorry about the type,” she said, “but it is better than the
newspapers.”
“The type? Is that the name of the story?” questioned the woman at the
wash-tub.
“The print I should say. Thank you for letting me come. But I am sorry
to leave those dishes.”
“Don’t be sorry. My kitchen will be very sweet when the syringas are
out. And don’t think I’m always so late with my washing. It was all
his folks.”
“How is Nettie these days?”
“Miserable enough. She doesn’t know how to get outside of her poor
little self. But then, who of us does, until we are _pulled_ out?” she
asked, with cheerful philosophy, as Miss Affy went away past the
syringa bushes.
Miss Affy spent an hour in Nettie Evans’s chamber, telling the little
girl stories about her great-niece, Judith Mackenzie, who lived in the
city with her dear, sick mother, and they both were soon coming to
Bensalem, and Judith would love to visit her often, and Judith told
stories, that were worth telling; last summer in the evenings, in
Summer Avenue, she had a dozen boys and girls on the steps, listening
to her stories continued from one evening to another. Nettie’s white
face grew glad, and in the night she was comforted by the thought of
the coming of the story-teller. Then Miss Affy crossed the street to
the one-story yellow house and read from a Sunday-school library-book
to blind Mrs. Trembly, whose only daughter had little time to spare
her mother from her housekeeping and dressmaking, and on her way home,
stopped at the Post-office with “Samuel Budget.”
At the supper table, she remarked to Cephas and her sister Rody: “I do
hope our new minister will have a good wife. Bensalem needs the
ministry of a woman—a real deaconess.”
“As if you weren’t one,” said Cephas, with admiration in his eyes.
“But I’m not the minister’s wife.”
“Nor anybody else’s,” retorted Aunt Rody, sharply, with a look at the
bald-headed, white-whiskered man opposite her at the foot of the
table. The look passed over him instead of going through him, as he
gave a laugh, a contented laugh that hurt Aunt Rody, even more than
she had intended her look to hurt him.
Those two would circumvent her some day; the longer she lived the more
sure she was of it, and the more would it cut her to the quick. Every
year she fought against it (if one can fight with no antagonist), the
more rebelliously she was set against it. There was but one hope for
her: that she would outlive one of them; she hoped to outlive both of
them.