IN A NEW HOME.
Three weeks after the funeral Mrs. Flannery had sufficiently recovered
her strength so that she could safely be moved from the rooms she had
occupied so long. Ray Goldwin had done much towards bringing about this
satisfactory result by her frequent visits and cheerful manner--always
saying and doing the right thing with admirable tact. She became much
interested in the childless woman whose heart still bled unceasingly for
her "poor Tom, poor Tom," as she murmured often to herself.
At the funeral Ray had contrasted her own life with that of Herbert and
Bob. As she pondered over what these two humble boys, with so slender
means, had done for the dying lad and his grief-stricken mother, she
felt how much she suffered by the comparison.
The solemnity of the occasion and the glowing words of praise for
the two friends of the dead, spoken with such peculiar force by the
minister, led her, as was natural, to overestimate their worth and
to undervalue her own. With the same spirit, therefore, with which
she admired Herbert and Bob for their acts, she condemned her own
inactivity, and there in that little room beside the remains of the
humble newsboy she resolved that she would be something more than a
society girl as her life had hitherto been tending. She had learned a
valuable lesson and given place to a purpose as noble as it was humane.
[Illustration: MRS. FLANNERY AND THE TWO BOYS IN THEIR NEW HOME.]
That she was carrying out this purpose her kind acts and words of
comfort to Mrs. Flannery amply attested. She, however, was not alone
the source of comfort while on these missions of noble charity, for the
sick woman gave her, unconsciously, to be sure, as she talked of Herbert
Randolph, a taste of happiness of a finer and sweeter character than she
herself, poor woman, could ever hope again to feel. It was born of hero
worship--a worship ripening into simple, childlike sentiment. I say hero
worship, for such her thoughts of young Randolph and Bob Hunter were
when she first realized how kind and generous they had been to him who
now lay dead, and to his helpless and heart broken mother.
Such thoughts, however, to a young girl just verging upon the age of
woman, and when the hero is a noble, manly boy like Randolph, are but
the buds of the more beautiful and fragrant flower which time is sure to
bring forth.
And this is the way that Ray came to find such pleasure in the simple
talk of Mrs. Flannery--talk that but for this magnetic interest must
have been unbearably dull to her young ears.
Herbert and Bob, feeling that it would be better for the bereaved mother
to get away from her present rooms where she was constantly reminded of
the dead, leased a neat little flat in Harlem, to which she was moved,
together with her furniture. Here they designed making a home for
themselves, inaugurating Mrs. Flannery as housekeeper. It seemed to them
that they could in no other way carry out so fully the wishes of their
dead friend. The housework would occupy her mind and keep her busy, and
by their living thus together she would have with her the two friends in
whose care the deceased had placed her. Moreover each desired a better
home than their cheerless attic room had been to them, and they felt
that they could now afford to spend more upon themselves.
Thus the flat was taken and with Mrs. Flannery's furniture, a few new
things from the store and little fancy articles made and contributed by
Ray and her mother, the boys found themselves very happily situated in
their new home. Mrs. Flannery, too, while at her new duties, recovered
more quickly than would seem possible from the terrible shock she had
sustained. In young Randolph and Bob Hunter she found all she could have
desired in sons of her own--found, as her poor dying boy had said, that
they would look out for her, and could do more for her than he. And she
proved a good mother to them, studying their every want with gratitude
and affection.
To Bob especially the comforts of his present life gave great happiness,
and as the weeks rolled by he became more and more attached to his new
home, and spent all the spare time possible in study, being taught by
Herbert.