“Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.”
—_Luke_ xi. 4.
“Lord, Thou knowest all things: Thou knowest that I love Thee.”
—_John_ xxi. 17.
It was rag-carpet afternoon; it was also another kind of an
afternoon, an afternoon with an adventure in it, and Judith longed
for adventures; but, of course, all she knew, at first, was the
rag-carpet; the adventure was to happen in the kitchen, and the
rag-carpet ball was happening in Aunt Affy’s room.
Judith was a working member of the Outing Ten, but if her outing
meant this rag-carpet ball it was very discouraging, and if it were
not for the pleasure of telling the President about the rag-carpet,
she thought she would resign and become member of a ten that had more
fun in it.
But then, Miss Marion was doing this kind of thing herself, things
she did not like to do about the house, for she had sent away her
servant and was doing all the work excepting washing and ironing,
and, perhaps, in the village, too, she was doing uncongenial errands;
but, of course, she would never tell the Outing Ten about that; she
was going out to tea and making calls, as she had said she never
_would_ do when she came to Bensalem, and she was taking her music
back and practicing hours every day, and reading solid books, instead
of novels; she had let books and music go for a while, Judith had
heard her say to Aunt Affy, and that Jean Draper’s outing had been
the blessing of her life. It was Nettie’s blessing, too; she told
Marion she had an “outing” every day; she was patching a quilt and
studying history.
The history study was a part of Marion’s outing, but the Ten did not
know that.
Aunt Affy, wearing a calico loose gown of lilac and white, was seated
in a rocker at the window combing her long gray hair: her hair was
soft and thick, she twisted it into a coil, and behind her each ear
she brushed a long curl.
Judith liked to twist these curls around her fingers when she talked
to Aunt Affy.
“Only a little more to do,” encouraged Aunt Affy, giving her coil a
firm twist.
Sitting on the matting at Aunt Affy’s feet the little girl began her
weary work again.
“Aunt Affy! How did you get your name?” she inquired with the
eagerness of something new to talk about.
“How did you get yours?” asked Aunt Affy, seriously.
“But mine is a real name.”
“Isn’t mine?”
“I never heard it before.”
“Some people have never heard of Judith.”
“That is true. Nettie never had.”
“Mine is in the Bible. So is Rody’s.”
“_Is_ it? Well, I’ve never read the Bible through.”
“I will show it to you.”
“Aunt Affy, you and Aunt Rody never look in the glass when you comb
your hair. You sit anywhere. It’s very funny.”
“When you have combed your hair sixty and eighty years you will not
need to look in the glass,” was the serious reply.
“It isn’t sixty,” said literal Judith. “You did not do it when you
were a baby.”
Taking her New Testament in large type from the small table near her,
Aunt Affy found the place and laid it on the arm of her chair; Judith
lifted herself and read where Aunt Affy’s finger pointed: “And to our
beloved Apphia—but that isn’t Affy,” said astonished Judith.
“It grew down to it when I was a girl, and has never grown up. Shall
I find Rody?”
Again Aunt Affy found the place, and Judith read. “‘And as Peter
knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken named
Rhoda.’ That’s very funny,” she said, settling down among her rags.
“There were eight of us girls, and we all had Bible names: Rody,
Dark, that was Dorcas, Mary, Marthy, Deborah, that’s your mother’s
mother, Hanner, it is really Hannah, Becky, and Affy the youngest, is
eight. Rody and I only are left. They were all married but Rody and
Becky and me. Cephas was engaged to poor Becky, and she died; he went
away after that, went South, went West, and at last came here; I
wrote to him to come and finish his days with me. Rody wasn’t exactly
pleased.”
“Why?” asked Judith, excited over the old folks’ romance.
“She doesn’t like new happenings, and she never _had_ liked Cephas.”
“She scolds him,” said Judith, with a feeling of sympathy.
“She scolds me. She scolds the minister. It is only her way of
talking.”
At that moment Aunt Rody’s blue gingham sunbonnet appeared at the
window; Judith’s nervous fingers worked hurriedly.
“Not done yet. Jean Draper is worth two of you. The graham bread is
out of the oven, a perfect bake, and I am going to call on Mrs.
Evans, and take Nettie a custard.”
“Well,” said Aunt Affy.
Aunt Rody’s hair was white, but if it were soft to the touch,
Judith’s fingers would never know; her black eyes were deep set, she
had not one tooth, and her wrinkled lips had a way of keeping
themselves sternly shut, unless they were sternly opened.
“Joe is hunting eggs; I hope he won’t get into mischief while I’m
gone.”
“He hasn’t yet,” said Judith, Joe’s champion.
Joe, with his closely cut black hair, his grateful eyes, new gray
suit with navy blue flannel shirt, rough shoes, willing and efficient
ways, and his great love for Doodles, was some one not at all out of
place on the “Sparrow farm;” even dainty Judith did not altogether
disapprove his presence at the table.
The small disciple’s forehead was all in a pucker, and the blue eyes
were so filled with tears that there was not room enough in her eyes
for them; one tear kept pushing another down over her cheeks; they
even rolled over her lips and tasted salt.
“Have you noticed the name on my new darning yarn?” inquired Aunt
Affy, replacing the New Testament on the table.
“Superior quality,” read Judith, taking the card from the basket Aunt
Affy brought to her lap from the table.
“No; on the top.”
“Dorcas,” read Judith.
“Dorcas. Who is that for?”
“The name of the man who made it,” replied Judith, stopping her
dawdling and threading her needle.
“I think not.”
“His little girl’s name, perhaps,” ventured Judith.
“It may be, for aught I know; but I do not _think_ that is the name
of the wool.”
“Then I don’t know,” said Judith, interestedly.
“I know something and I will tell you. A long, long, _long_ time ago,
there was a little girl; I think she learned to sew when she was a
little girl, for she knew how to sew beautifully, and her work was
strong and did not rip easily. Perhaps she began by doing
disagreeable things and then went on to other things until she
learned how to make coats and garments for children and grown-up
people. Her name was Dorcas.”
“Did the man who made the wool into yarn know about her?” asked
Judith.
“I think so. Almost everybody does.”
“I never heard of her before. Is that all?”
“No; that is only the beginning. She was a disciple. And disciples
always love each other and work for each other.”
“Do they?” asked Judith, her face glowing. Why, that was splendid and
easy.
“And she worked for widows and perhaps for their little children, and
they loved her dearly. But she died, and oh, how they grieved! They
sent for another disciple, Peter; they thought he could help them.
His faith was so great that he kneeled down and prayed; then he spoke
to her, and she opened her eyes, and looked at him, and then she sat
up. And then he called the people she had made coats and garments
for, and in great joy they had her back alive again. God was willing
for her to come back to earth and go on with her beautiful work. He
cares for the work of his disciples, even when it is only using
thread and needle.”
Judith’s curly head drooped over her hated work; she was so ashamed
of behaving “ugly”; she hoped she had not behaved quite as ugly as
she felt.
The ball was the required size at last, and she joyfully took it up
in the garret to the barrel that was only half filled.
Then, aimlessly, she wandered into the kitchen, and there, odorously,
temptingly, under a clean, coarse towel, were the two loaves of warm
graham bread; she thought she cared for nothing in the way of bread,
cake, or pudding as much as she cared for fresh graham bread and
butter.
And Aunt Rody never _would_ put it on the table fresh. For a slice of
this she must wait until tomorrow night.
Lifting the coarse towel she peeped, then she touched; another touch
brought a crumb, such a delicious crumb; another, and another, and
another delicious crumb, and the crust of one end of a loaf was all
picked off.
“Oh, deary _me_!” cried Judith, in dismay.
Then she covered it carefully, standing spellbound.
What would Aunt Rody say to her?
What would Aunt Rody _do_ to her?
Afraid to go away and leave the bread that would tell its own story,
afraid to stay with it, for Aunt Rody’s sunbonnet and heavy step
might appear at any moment, she went to the sink to pump water over
her hands and to decide what to do next.
Joe was on his way to the barn and stables to gather eggs; Aunt Rody
had made a law that she should not go into any of the outbuildings
without permission,—without _her_ permission; in summer time there
were “so many machines and things around, and children had a way of
stepping into the jaws of death.” She missed hunting the eggs.
The gate swung to, there was a step on the flagged path; with her
hands dripping, she flew up the kitchen stairs; on the landing she
waited, breathless, to hear what Aunt Rody would say.
The step was in the kitchen, there was a pause,—Aunt Rody must be
uncovering the bread; a smothered exclamation, then a quick, angry
voice: “_That_ Joe! He’s always doing something underhanded. He’s too
fond of eating; I will not say one word, but he shall not have any of
_this_ graham bread, or the next, if I can help it. When he asks for
it I’ll tell him before all the table-full that he _knows why_.”
The awful sentence was delivered in an awful voice; tearful and
trembling, the culprit up the stairway heard every word; it was her
dreadful secret, her guilty secret; she no more dared to rush down
the stairs and confess the theft than she dared—she could not think
of any comparison.
She fled through the large, unfurnished chamber, known as the
store-room, to her own room, and there, bolting the door, threw
herself upon the bed and wept as she had never wept before; because
she had never been so wicked and frightened before. Joe would be
punished for her sin; she would not dare confess if Aunt Rody starved
him to death.
“Judith, Judith, come out on the piazza,” called Aunt Affy.
She peeped in the glass: her eyes were red, and her hair was tumbled;
the latter was nothing new, she could sit in the hammock with her
eyes away from Aunt Affy.
As she stepped from the sitting-room door to the piazza, Joe rushed
around the corner of the house, an egg in each hand, frightened and
out of breath.
“There’s an earthquake—in the southern part of Africa—and I’ve been
in it; and I’m afraid the house will go in; oh, what shall we do? Mr.
Brush is up in the field—”
“Stand still, Joe, and get some breath to talk with, and then tell us
what has happened to you,” said Aunt Affy, quietly. Joe dropped on
the piazza floor, still carefully holding the eggs.
“Will the house rock and come down, do you think, Aunt Affy, as the
houses did in the book Judith read?”
“How did you get all that earth on your clothes and tear your
shirt-sleeve?” Judith inquired, forgetting her red eyes in the latest
adventure.
“In the earthquake; I went in almost up to my neck, but I held on
with one hand and didn’t break the eggs.”
“Where _was_ the earthquake?” she asked.
“In the sheep pen. I was looking for eggs, and the first I knew I
felt the ground sliding, and I was going down—there was water, for I
heard it splash. I thought you said _fire_ was inside the earth; I
went down into water. And I caught hold of something with one hand
because I had two eggs in the other, and I pulled, and pulled, and
pulled myself up and out.”
“Why, Joe, you poor boy,” exclaimed Aunt Affy, in alarm, “that old
cistern has caved in at last, and you’ve been in it; you might have
been drowned. What a mercy that you are safe. Don’t you go near that
sheep pen again until Mr. Brush says you may.”
“I’ll _never_ go near it again—I’ve had enough of it. I _couldn’t_
scream—I tried to, but nobody heard. Are you sure it won’t cave in
again, and get here, and swallow up the house?”
“_That_ will not,” laughed Judith, “Oh, you queer boy.”
“Then may I have some bread and butter?” he asked, rising. “I think
it will turn me crazy if it caves in again.”
“Aunt Rody is in the kitchen; tell her your story and ask her for the
bread,” replied Aunt Affy.
Judith trembled so that she could scarcely stand; she dared not
follow Joe; she dared not stay where she was: Aunt Rody herself made
a way of escape for her by coming to the kitchen door with a slice of
graham bread in her hand.
“Here, Joe: I heard your story. Here’s the bread. I hope you’ll
behave yourself after this. Now, Judith, you see the reason I keep
you from hunting eggs. You might be dead in that cistern this moment.”
“You couldn’t pull yourself up as I did,” remarked Joe, giving Aunt
Rody the two eggs as she handed him the graham bread.
Judith drew a long breath of relief. Now she need never tell; Joe
would not be punished.
That evening at family prayer Cephas read about the institution of
the Lord’s Supper and the betrayal of Christ: Joe shuffled his feet
until a look from Aunt Rody quieted him; Judith looked as if she were
listening, but she did not catch the meaning of a single sentence
until something arrested her rapid, remorseful thinking: “And when
they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down
together, Peter sat down among them. But a certain maid beheld him as
he sat by the fire, and earnestly looking upon him, and said, This
man was also with him. And he denied him, saying: Woman I know him
not.”
Peter was afraid. He was afraid to tell that woman. The small
disciple looked at the old lady sitting in her high straight-backed
chair, with her long hands so still in her lap, her lips tight shut,
her eyes roving from Joe to Judith, and then to Joe, then the
dreadful round again, and she thought the woman that frightened Peter
must have been like Aunt Rody.
She knew how afraid Peter was.
She did not hear one word of the long prayer; she knelt near Aunt
Rody; she tried not to sob, or to be afraid, but she _was_ afraid;
not now of being found out, but afraid that she was wicked. As long
as she lived she would never dare to tell.
And she never did tell, not as long as Aunt Rody lived.
For many a day her heart was heavy with the sin of allowing the
innocent to be suspected; but she was not a very brave small disciple.
One night at prayers she surprised them all by saying suddenly and
vehemently: “I don’t care if Peter _was_ so wicked; I like him better
than anybody in the whole Bible.”