Chapter I
Hester opened her eyes in the gray dawn of the New Year’s morning, and gave a little chuckle of delight.
There was nothing very cheering about her. The attic in which she slept was decent, it is true, in fact, was comfortable; but it was dark and rather cold, and there was just as little furniture as one could get along with. Yet Hester hugged the big red and brown comfortable, and lay still a few minutes to enjoy her thoughts. There was no bright stocking hung up for her as she knew there was down-stairs for the children of the family. She did not expect a single present of any sort; in fact, she never had New Year’s presents, or presents of any kind. But oh, how happy she was!
She had never been to a party in her life, and to-day she was going. Mrs. Neilson, her Sabbath-school teacher, had made a New Year’s party for her class. A great many whispers had buzzed through the class last Sunday about the wonders that would be seen in her beautiful home; and Hester’s hopes and expectations ran high. Besides, she had a brand new dress to wear. To be sure it was only a bright calico of pretty figure and neat make. But Hester was not used to anything better, and she thought the new calico with a lace ruffle in the neck was beautiful. So with her heart all full of happiness, she presently hopped out of her warm nest and began to dress. It was less than two hours afterwards that Hester’s morning clouded.
“Hester!” came in an unusually loud sharp voice from Mrs. Denton’s room. Mrs. Denton was the woman with whom Hester lived; a pretty good woman generally. Hester dropped the cloth she was polishing the knives with and ran in haste; the tone was so unusually sharp.
Loud, excited voices sounded down to her from the room above, as she ran up the stairs. Miss Cora was there, and Miss Emeline, and she could hear Miss Cora’s voice saying: “Of course she did it, mother, who else would?”
Then Hester knocked timidly at the door.
“Hester, look here!”
Mrs. Denton’s voice was positively awful. No wonder. She held, thrown over her arm, Miss Cora’s blue silk dress which always reminded Hester of the sky in a winter day, or the sea getting ready for a storm. Across the front breadth were great bright drops of blood. At least, that was what they looked like to the horrified Hester. After awhile she discovered that they were blotches of red ink: enough of them to ruin the dress.
“Now,” said Mrs. Denton, still in that awful voice, “suppose you give us an account of this business!”
“WHO DID IT?”
She give an account of that business! What did she know about it? How could they think that she knew anything about those wonderful blue silk waves?
“Me, ma’am?” she said, catching up the hem of her work-apron and rolling it around her finger as she always did when she was startled, her face growing red and white by turns.
“Yes, you! How came you to put those ink-stains on this dress? What could have been your object, you wicked child? After all that we have done for you, too. I cannot think it possible that it was an accident, for you have no business near the dress. The least you can do is to give an account of yourself.”
“Why, ma’am,” said Hester, her cheeks ablaze now, “why ma’am, how can you think—I don’t know—I never touched or saw—”
“Mamma,” said Cora, “how can you stand there and hear her tell stories? The deceitful, spiteful little thing! My best dress utterly ruined, and I have nothing fit to wear to-day.” And the young lady crumpled herself into a heap on the foot of her mother’s bed and sobbed aloud.
“Hester,” said Mrs. Denton, “there is no use in your trying to deceive us in this way. It would be a great deal better for you to confess your sin and explain what object you could have had. I am perfectly astonished. I knew you were a high-tempered little girl, but I couldn’t have believed you guilty of such wickedness. When did you do it?”
“I never did! I never did!” almost screamed poor Hester, and her tears rolled faster than Miss Cora’s.
“Stop!” said the awful voice of Mrs. Denton. “How dare you stand there and tell me what is false? Don’t you know, you wicked child, that Miss Cora had the dress on only last evening? That at tea time it was in perfect order? That you were missing with colored inks all the afternoon—foolish woman that I was to allow it!—and that when Miss Cora changed the dress in my room at dusk, for her street one, she sent you up-stairs with it, and here it is this morning lying across the sofa where yen were told to put it, utterly ruined with the ink that you, and you only, put on it? Naughty, wicked girl! I wouldn’t have believed that you could be so vindictive. Miss Cora says you slammed the door as hard as you could last night, just because she reproved you for brushing past Mr. Stuart’s chair instead of going behind it as you ought; and to think that you should have taken such a horrid revenge!”
Poor, red-faced Hester! What could she say or do? There was just one part of this dreadful story that was true. She had felt cross at Miss Cora for reproving her before Mr. Stuart, and she had slammed the door. She remembered it well. The thought of it made her cheeks burn with shame. But oh, to think that she was accused of inking that beautiful silk dress, on purpose, too, and for revenge! What should she do? It seemed of no use to say again that she didn’t do it; for she could hardly expect them to believe her. She had been amusing herself for a whole bright hour with those lovely colored inks, and she was the only one who had touched the silk dress after tea. How could the ink have got on it? She didn’t know. All that she could do was to cry. This she did. She covered her face with her apron, and with one long, loud wail, that, if Miss Cora’s face had not been buried in the bedclothes, might have gone to her heart, fled away to that attic room, there to throw herself on the foot of the bed, and cry as though her heart would break. And truly Hester thought that it would.
She did not know how many hours afterwards it was that she heard her name called at the foot of the stairs.
“Hester!” There was nothing for it but to take her tear-stained face and sore little heart down-stairs.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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A Day That Johnny Never Forgot
It was a bright winter morning, and it was Saturday. It was early yet—only half-past six—but Johnny Blynn was up and dressed.
THE BEGINNING OF THE DAY.
He got up early now mostly—ever since he had a room to himself. He was in a hurry to use his pretty blue washbowl and his new stiff hair brush, and look about his beautiful room and think how nice it was to be in there alone like any gentleman making his toilet, the door locked, and even mamma not coming in without knocking.
It was a nice room. It had pea-green furniture, because that was Johnny’s favorite color. There were a pretty gray carpet with a green border, and white muslin curtains at the window, and pictures on the walls.
He did his work nicely. He was careful not to spill water, nor spatter the drops about, although he washed himself till his face looked like a pink and white morning-glory dripping with dew, then he brushed his yellow curls, and dressed himself in his navy-blue suit. How like a gentleman he looked when it was all done, his collar white as snow, his necktie in a neat bow, everything all right, even his finger-nails clean and white as any lady’s.
He had one thing more to do before he went down-stairs. He drew his rocking-chair near the register, and took his Bible and read a few verses, then he knelt down and prayed. This part of his duties was not so well done as the other had been. The Bible verses were gabbled off as fast as he could make his tongue go. As to the prayer, the words were all right. He asked God to bless him and make him a good boy—obedient and kind, and keep him from being naughty to anybody, but he was so busy thinking whether it was likely the creek was frozen hard enough to skate on, that he scarcely knew what he was saying. He hurried through the prayer and went down-stairs as fast as he could go.
In the dining-room was sister Nellie, standing by the grate warming her hands. Johnny seized hold of one of her long braids and gave it such a twitch that the blue ribbon that tied it came near falling into the fire.
Then Johnny laughed, and Nellie said impatiently, as she twitched at the knot in the ribbon:
“It’s too bad! When I had my hair all ready for breakfast.”
“Hair for breakfast! Ho! Ho!” shouted Johnny, dancing teasingly about her. “Whoever heard tell of such a thing?”
Then did Nellie’s patience vanish entirely, and she sprang up to give Johnny a good shake, but he darted away and ran out-of-doors, appearing soon in the kitchen, much to the dismay of Bridget who was flurrying about trying to dish up breakfast. If there was anybody in the world that Bridget didn’t want to see in the kitchen, it was Johnny; so as soon as he bounced in, she said:
“Now get out of this, Johnny Blynn, this very minute!”
But Johnny seized the spoon that was in the batter-cakes, shouting, “I’ll bake cakes for you.”
Then he tried to put a cake on the griddle. He plunged the spoon deep into the batter and carried it dripping across the table, and floor, and stove, and splashed it on to the griddle.
Then Bridget seized both the spoon and the boy, put the spoon in the dish and the boy through the open door, then shut and locked it, saying wrathfully, as she put him out, “You’re the very worst boy in this world!”
This was a specimen of that whole day. He could not go out to skate, because his mother said he was too hoarse to play out-of-doors such a cold day, and such a day as they had of it! If Johnny’s business had been to torment everybody, make them lose their tempers and upset nerves generally, he would have been a master-hand at business, for he went from one thing to another as fast as possible, never once stopping to rest himself.
He dropped papa’s watch, and spilt the ink, and tipped over mamma’s work-basket, and quarreled with Nellie, played pranks on Bridget, worried the cat, and teased the dog, till about four o’clock in the afternoon; and then something happened.
From the window he saw two ladies coming to call upon his mother, and immediately he ran into the parlor and hid behind the folding-doors, when, as they stood open, were nice little corners behind them. “It will be such fun,” he said to himself, “to hear what they say when they think they are all alone.”
So, while they waited for his mother to come down, they talked. They were friends of her school-girl days, and one of them had not seen her for several years. They talked in low tones, but Johnny could hear every word they said. One lady said to the other:
“Cornelia has a pleasant home.”
“Yes,” the other answered; “and Mr. Blynn is a very fine man.”
“She has two children, you said. Are they nice children?”
“Why, yes, they are very smart and handsome. Nellie is a sweet child, but Johnny is a perfect little torment. His mother spent the day with me when I lived out at Riverdale, and she brought him along. He kept my nerves on the stretch all day. There wasn’t a thing on the mantel or table but he must have hold of. I expected everything would go to shivers that he touched, he was so rough. He brought mud on my carpet, and trod on the lace curtains, and put his feet on the sofa, and his mother kept saying, ‘Johnny, don’t! Johnny, stop!’ And Johnny never obeyed until he was spoken to three times. I guess his mother was glad when night came; and I’m sure I was. I thought Cornelia would succeed better in training children; she certainly has made a great failure in this case.”
HOW THE DAY ENDED.
“What a pity that she should have such a burden to carry; you said her health was frail.”
“Yes, very; I should not be surprised if she did not live very long.”
Just then the door opened, and Mrs. Blynn came into the room. Johnny peeped through the crack at her—his sweet, beautiful mother; how pretty she looked, dressed in white, with pink cheeks and bright eyes! What dreadful thing was this he had just heard; his mamma die!—How could it be? He had never thought of such a thing in his life. How he wished he could get out of that place and go up to his room. He wanted to cry out loud.
To think, too, that anybody should speak of him in that way—“a perfect little torment!” Oh, it was too dreadful! Had he really done all those awful things when he was at Mrs. Graham’s last summer? He rolled over on the floor and had hard work to keep from screaming outright.
Just then what did Mrs. Blynn say but:
“Is not this draught too strong for you, Mrs. Graham?” And arising, closed the folding-doors, when behold! curled in a heap in the corner was Johnny.
“Why!” said mamma.
But Johnny waited to hear no more. A dart and a bound took him through the door, and on he went up to his own room, where he cried himself almost sick; but while he cried, he did more thinking than ever he had in his short life before.
“Nobody shall ever call me a torment again,” he said with a long-drawn sob. “I’ll show ’em my mother does know how to bring up children; I will!”
Don’t suppose that Johnny grew to be a wonderfully good boy all at once after that big resolve. He tried to keep it, but he kept forgetting and doing the same naughty things day after day. He told it all to mamma one night—how it was of no use for him to try and be good; he “just couldn’t!”
And then mamma said:
“Johnny, dear, don’t you know you must pray just as you play, with all your heart, and your heart must run to Jesus when you feel that you are tempted to be naughty, just as you call after me when you are in any danger?”
That made the way plainer, and everybody began soon to say, “Johnny is certainly growing to be a better boy.”
Three Little M’s — A Three-Part Story
Matilda, Martha, and Mary. That’s what folks called them.
As to their looks, they were as alike as three peas in a pod. Even their father, good fat old Mr. Poser, who kept the small shop where the cross-roads met, said, “’Tain’t in natur’ to know which is the other, unless you see ’em a-workin’.”
And this is the way they worked—these three little M’s. “Two,” I should say, for alas! one of these dear little girls was never a worker at all. Although Matilda, the eldest, skipped around the small shop, busy as a bee, helping father every day, and Martha, the next one, minded the house, little Mary, the youngest of the bunch, let them work alone while she tried to have a good time in her own naughty little way. For she didn’t believe in making life beautiful in the way God has intended for all children as well as great folks, by cheerful, faithful labor, that makes play-time when it comes just twice as jolly because earned. Not she! She wanted high holiday “all” the time, and so she made her father very unhappy, and the tears to trail down from the little sister’s big brown eyes very often, all because she “would” have her own way, and spend every day in running and racing here, there, and everywhere, for something new to look at.
Was she happy? Can a little child be, who turns her back on duty? And didn’t she ever stop that bad, bad habit? Well, we’ll see. Stay! I’ll whisper it to you beforehand—my answer. Yes, she “did” stop, and all because of—and here’s my story!
“Oh, dear, dear, ‘dear!’”
Fat Mr. Poser sat right down on the cover of a butter-tub, although it was the busiest day in the week—Saturday—and just wrung his hands, which were like two small pincushions.
“What’s the matter, pa?” cried Matilda, taking, by a violent effort, her eyes from off the jar of pink and white peppermint sticks. “Oh, what ‘is’ the matter?” And she ran over to his side.
But the fat shop-keeper only groaned, and unclasped the two pincushions enough to disclose in their centre a bright silver quarter of a dollar.
“‘There!’” at last he said.
“Oh, my!” exclaimed Matilda, her eyes as big as good-sized cups; “that’s Mrs. Smith’s change.”
“I know it,” said Mr. Poser. Then he groaned again; and getting up from the butter-tub, he waddled to the door.
“OH, DEAR, DEAR!”
“‘Ma-a-ry!’” he called, as loud as he could scream.
A small blue gown, and a little red hood, that were flying past, came to a full stop.
“Now you trot right straight off to Mrs. Smith’s house in Crow Hollow as fast as you can trot, an’ tell her she left this quarter, after buying that chopping-bowl this morning.”
At that, there came such a whine from the little red hood, that Mr. Poser cried sternly, “You might as well stretch your legs for somethin’. Start now, an’ don’t you stop anywheres! ‘Mind!’”
The whine ceased suddenly, as the blue gown and little red hood took themselves slowly out of the big gate. For the first half-mile or more, Mary went on quite steadily. Then she began to sigh—a sigh that soon broke out into a dismal cry—a cry that only half made itself heard, for the very good reason that Mary stopped to wink her eyes so violently, she had no time to attend to anything else.
“Why—why—ee!” she cried to herself and the birds. “‘Folks have moved into the dungeon!’”
The “dungeon” was an old rambling stone mansion down on the edge of the wood, unoccupied since the old squire had died, and given up to the crows and the bats. Mary grasped her silver quarter tightly in her little fist, while her two naughty feet began to carry her up to the big green door.
“I’ll take ‘one’ look,” she whispered to her conscience; “only ‘one;’ then I’ll run all the faster to Mrs. Smith’s.”
But that “one look” showed her a pair of cunning little rabbits just inside the barn-door, nibbling a cabbage-leaf.
“I wish ‘I’ had rabbits,” she said, wistfully gazing at them. “I’m going to ask the folks in there to let me play with ’em sometime. Maybe there’s a girl as big as me lives here. I mean to see.”
So Mary stepped up a steep flight of short stairs leading into the house, and was just going in, when a big black dog running suddenly out, met her at the top, and coming to a full stop, showed all his teeth and gave “such” a bark, that the little girl turned around in a twinkling, and began to scuttle down the stairs with all her might.
The dog came tumbling after, barking violently at every step. Frightened almost to death, Mary flew along the barn floor, out into a dirty little court-yard, and, just in time to keep the little blue gown from a sharp snip of the white, gleaming teeth, she plunged against a door that stood conveniently open, threw herself on its other side, slammed it to, and tumbled down in a small heap on a pile of potatoes, to draw a long breath.
A PRISONER IN THE CORN-CHAMBER.
It was a little room, all filled with corn piled up in small bins with heaps of cobs thrown down just where children’s busy fingers had been shelling; bags of meal fresh from the mill, and everywhere else that anything could be stowed, were heaps and heaps of potatoes. All this while the dog was howling away smartly outside.
“Hum—hum—‘hum!’” said Mary, trying to catch her breath. “Oh, me, ain’t I tired, though! Now when that dog goes away, I’ll go right straight off to Mrs. Smith’s. I don’t want to see any more of these folks. ‘Why! Where’s—my—quarter!’”
For her fat little palm was empty.
Just then a loud voice struck up, outside the old door:
“Come off, Bose! ‘Sharp,’ sir.”
“Er-r-‘oof!’” Patter, patter, patter, went the dog’s feet, as he unwillingly obeyed, leaving Mary to wriggle in delight at her escape.
“Now, then,” she was just going to say, when, “click—‘snap!’” went the key in the lock, and before she quite knew it, she was fast a prisoner in the old corn-chamber.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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Twenty-Four Hours
“FIZZ! Sizzle!” said the mixture in the big pot on the stove. Miss Penelope stirred it, looking meantime so grim that it might almost have soured the mixture, whatever it was.
The kitchen was in after-dinner order; the stove shone brightly—the only bright thing to be seen, for the sun could not look in, and furniture was very scarce.
Suddenly the door opened, and a rush of cold air came in, with a few flakes of snow, and a pretty girl, in a green flannel suit, with a green velvet hat to match.
“Did you say come?” she asked in a cheery voice. “The wind blows so I couldn’t tell. Miss Penelope, mamma wants to know if I may come and stay twenty-four hours with you? She was called away very suddenly, and she didn’t know what to do with me.”
“DID YOU SAY COME?”
“‘Well,’” said Miss Penelope, after standing up straight, and looking at her visitor in amazed silence for a minute, “I should think you ’had’ come!”
The pretty girl laughed a silvery laugh. “That is true,” she said, stepping in, and closing the heavy door. “Mamma didn’t know what else to do; she was in ‘such’ a flurry. The telegram never came until about an hour before the last train; it was from my uncle in the city. Mamma doesn’t know him very much, and I never saw him in my life; but it seems he is ‘very’ sick, and wants to see mamma. She thought she ought to go, but of course she couldn’t take me, and she said she knew you would take care of me until the four o’clock train to-morrow, when she would come back: she didn’t like to trust me anywhere else. So I have my brush and comb, and all my night things in this bag.”
“Humph!” said Miss Penelope. “Sit down, and take off your things.”
Her face was, if possible, grimmer than before. If there was any one thing that she disliked more than flies, and dogs, and tramps, it was visitors. She never had them if she could possibly help it. The green-dressed maiden’s mother, who had known her all her life, and took more liberties with her than anybody else, never ventured to come to tea; yet here she had sent her daughter to stay twenty-four hours.
“Whatever shall I do with her, or say to her?” said Miss Penelope, dashing around her kitchen like a great frightened fly.
But the first thing to do was to get her some supper, as the old-fashioned clock in the corner said “almost five o’clock.” Miss Penelope never was known to have supper one minute after five o’clock.
The new-comer, whose name was Helena, did not seem uncomfortable in the least. She hung up her own hat and sack, then hovered around Miss Penelope.
“Let me set the table, please,” she said eagerly; “I always do for mamma. It will seem so funny to eat supper without her.”
She did not wait for permission, but helped herself to two old-fashioned blue and white plates, two cups and saucers, and the quaint little sugar-bowl, exclaiming as she did so over the pretty pictures on them.
Miss Penelope seemed too much astonished to speak. When had her table ever been set “for” her before! In fact, she could not remember the time. But she could remember the time when it was always set for two. Not very long ago, her old mother sat at the foot of the table.
It was in the evening, when the kitchen was trim and proper again, and the old-fashioned lamp was lighted, and Miss Penelope sewed on a “very” dark calico apron, large enough to cover her all up, that Helena said: “I brought my Bible among my night things; shall I get it and read my verses aloud, as I do to mamma?”
What could Miss Penelope do but give a sort of grunt for assent; of course, being a decent woman, she couldn’t very well refuse to have a chapter in the Bible read to her, though the old mother had been the only one who had ever done it.
So the clear voice of the young reader commenced: “And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him: If thou wilt thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will, be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.”
“Only think how quick!” said Helena, looking up with shining eyes. “Just for the ‘asking!’ Oh, Miss Penelope, don’t you wish Jesus was on earth now? Then uncle might have asked Him to make ‘him’ well, and mamma need not have gone away; but that is silly, I know; He can hear us just as well, and do just as much for us; only the trouble people is, people won’t ‘ask.’ Uncle never asks Him for anything, mamma says. It sometimes seems to me if such people could ‘see’ Him they would ask Him for what they need: but I don’t suppose they would. Mamma says they would be like those people who wanted Him to go away out of their country and not bother them.”
Then she went on with her reading.
Miss Penelope did not hear much more. Her heart went back to the day when her old mother had read her that very story, and how she told of the time when “she” asked Him for healing, and he gave t; and then the tired old voice would say: “Oh, Penelope, my girl, I wish you would go to Him!” Penelope never had.
The next day passed busily to Helena. A telegram came for her. She was to be put on the four-thirty train, and go to the city; mamma would meet her at the depot.
Helena never came back to the little village. The old uncle died—not then, nor the next day, nor the next, but after weeks of pain.
He left all his money to Helena’s mother, and the little bit of a cottage home where she and her daughter used to live, was broken up, and they lived in the grand city home. Helena never saw Miss Penelope again; for, strange to say, before the uncle died, God called for the lonely old woman. So Helena doesn’t know yet, but some day when she goes to heaven she will—for there will be a bright star in her crown, and when she inquires for whom it shines, she will learn in great astonishment that it stands for the soul of Miss Penelope, who was led, through those simple, earnest words of hers, and through the words read to her from the Bible that was among her “night things,” to go herself and “ask Jesus.”
P. S.
Now, what does that stand for? Not “Postscript,” because every one is to be told the first thing. So all you bright Pansies, now listen!
“P. S.” forever and forever, and then again forever after this stands for—
“PANSY SOCIETY!”
And it is to be all our own? Yes, indeed! And we are to have all the say about it too? Yes, indeed! again.
Now, then, “who will join? What shall be our motto? What shall we do? How shall we do it? Where shall we meet? When shall we meet? What will come of it?”
Oh, wait—wait—wait! You fairly overwhelm me with questions. It is late, and this paper should go to press. I can’t answer now. Let me give just a little hint.
In the first place, the name is the “PANSY SOCIETY.” That’s settled. Then the motto comes, and that is “Pansies for Thoughts.” What kind of thoughts? Oh, sweet, good, pure, unselfish, helpful thoughts, such as Pansies, beautiful Pansies, ought to inspire.
And we’ll have a badge? Of course we will! Whoever heard of a society without a badge. And ours will be the most beautiful in all the world. That’s settled, too. Just hear what it is going to be. The most beautiful round locket of wood, on the face of which is a lovely pansy, naturally colored. Above is the name, “PANSY SOCIETY,” underneath the motto, “Pansies for Thoughts.” A perforation at the top holds the ribbon to suspend the locket on the neck.
Now, “who may join?”
Every boy and girl who takes the PANSY, and is willing to promise to try to overcome his or her faults, to encourage every good impulse, to try to conquer some hard lesson at school, to do “anything” that shows a disposition to help the cause of right in the world. Any one who will say from the heart: “I promise to try each day to do some kind act, or say some kind word that shall help somebody;” and honest effort will be rewarded as much as if success were gained. Whoever will promise this shall receive the badge “at once,” on sending notice of such determination to the editor.
This promise must be dated, and will be copied into the “P. S.” roll-book. Each child is invited to write to the editor how far the trial has proved a success, how many temptations have been resisted, how much progress in any direction has been made, etc., feeling sure of encouragement and loving help.
And we will have some beautiful books of our own to read, which all the “P. S.” people can get for much less money than anybody else. We will have local meetings. If any of you want to ask, “what in the world are those?” Go to mother, or father, or big brother John. They will tell you.
That is enough for now—excepting the most important of all—our whisper motto: “I will do it for Jesus’ sake.”
“FOR JESUS’ SAKE.”
Whatever He will own, the “P. S.” will be proud and glad to copy on its roll-book.
And the PANSY will help. As it has always been glad to encourage those who are struggling up toward the light, so now it reaches forth its helping hand to those little ones who will rally bravely around it, to the work of putting down the evil, and the support of all things good and beautiful. That is all for now. Just a hint in a hurry; more next month.
Meantime, how many names shall we receive? Send postal-card with name to D. LOTHROP & CO., 32 Franklin St., Boston, Mass.
SARAH LAMBERT.
Side by Side
[PART I.]
Behold I WILL SEND MY MESSENGER, AND HE SHALL PREPARE THE WAY BEFORE ME.
THE PEOPLE THAT WALKED IN DARKNESS HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT.
I, EVEN I, AM HE THAT BLOTTETH OUT THY TRANSGRESSSIONS FOR MINE OWN SAKE, AND WILL NOT REMEMBER THY SINS.
REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY, TO KEEP IT HOLY.
Sarah Lambert lived with her mother in one room over Mr. Dunlap’s stable. The stairs leading up to it were narrow and steep and dark. The room was dark when you reached it; only one window, with small, old-fashioned panes of glass. The window was dirty, too, and trimmed with cobwebs. There were two wooden-seated chairs, a poor bedstead, a table of the old-fashioned kind, with one leaf gone, a cooking-stove that smoked, of course, as all worn-out stoves do, and that stood on three legs, its door hanging by one hinge.
In this room one winter morning, Sarah Lambert washed her face from a tin basin, on a corner of one chair, snarled at her tangled hair a few minutes with a broken comb, put on a pair of ragged stockings and ragged shoes, and, over some very thin and old undergarments, a dark brown calico dress, patched in three places, wound a piece of brown and white plaid shawl about her, put on a gray felt hat without any trimming, and without any breakfast stole out of the room.
Her mother was still sleeping, though the sun was high. She went to bed the night before intending to sleep until she was ready to wake up; for she knew that the next day would be Sunday. As for Sarah, she was going to Sunday-school, whatever that meant; she had promised a lady the day before that she would.
SIDE BY SIDE.
Ethol Harrison lived with her father and mother and brothers and sisters in the great stone house three squares away from Sarah Lambert’s. The room in which she slept late that Sunday morning had a crimson carpet on the floor, and crimson curtains at the windows, and costly and elegant furniture.
When Ethol had eaten a breakfast of broiled chicken, and toast, and canned fruit, she was dressed by Hannah in a dark blue velvet suit with hat to match, having a long white plume winding all about it, kid gloves on her bits of hands, and kid boots on her bright stockinged feet, lovely white furs, cape, and muff, to crown all, and she too went to Sunday-school.
Behold, she and Sarah Lambert sat side by side in the bright room full of people. Ethol smoothed down her new velvet dress, and buttoned her glove, and tossed back her plume, and smiled and nodded to her friends, and Sarah sat like a statue at her side and stared. She had never seen such a light, bright, beautiful room as that in her life. Both of the girls received cards with the words on them that are at the head of this story. Both girls read them at once, for Sarah went to day-school and knew how to read. They were new words to her. She was so astonished over them, that she forgot her awe of Ethol and nudged at the blue velvet sack nod whispered:
“What was it?”
“What was ‘what?’”
“That great light; where was it—what did it show them?”
Then Ethol giggled.
“Miss Mason,” she said, “this little girl wants to know what they saw by the great light.”
Miss Mason turned to Sarah, whose checks were now very red.
“Don’t you know who the light is, dear?” she said gently.
“No,” said Sarah, but she felt comforted. Miss Mason’s voice made her think of the music that she heard as she passed the church.
“It means Jesus, my child; you know the world was very dark until he came.”
“Wasn’t there any sun to shine?” asked Sarah; and Ethol giggled again.
“Yes; but I don’t mean that kind of darkness. I mean full of sin, and sorrow, and trouble; and the people did not know the way out. While He was here they used to bring sick people to him; those whom no doctor could cure; and he would just touch them, or speak to them, and they would be well at once.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Sarah, promptly.
And Ethol said: “Oh-h! What a wicked girl!”
“That is what some of the people said who were looking on,” Miss Mason told her. “‘They’ wouldn’t believe in the great light though Jesus gave them so many reasons for believing. Open your Bibles, girls. Here is one for you, Sarah. Let us read the story about the sick woman who was cured of fever in an instant.”
Sarah looked at the place pointed out to her, and listened, and read when her turn came; she had never heard of such a thing in her life. She asked a great many questions, and amused Ethol so much that she almost forgot her new hat with its long plume.
“Where has he gone?” asked, Sarah, suddenly, interrupting Miss Mason in the middle of a sentence. “Where has this great doctor gone to?”
Then Miss Mason tried to explain, that though he had gone back to heaven, his spirit was here and could do just as great and wonderful things as ever.
“He can’t cure people in a minute now.” said Sarah, positively; “’cause Mr. Dunlap’s Nettie was awful sick, and had doctors and doctors, and she died. If this man could have cured her, Mr. Dunlap would have had him, for he loved her just awful.”
“Did you ever ‘see’ such a girl?” whispered Ethol to the little girl on her left. “Why, she is a perfect heathen.”
Well, the Sunday-school was over, and Sarah took her motto-card home with her, and thought about the verses, and studied them, and read them to her mother, and wondered over them, and wished a hundred times a day that she could see Jesus just for a minute.
Ethol put her card in her pocket—crumpling it as she did so—and I don’t think she thought of it again until the next Sabbath morning.
Now I want, during the year 1882, to tell you a good deal about these two girls who often sat side by side, and stood side by side, and walked side by side, and yet were so different. You will see if you keep watch of their lives, that the difference between them reached beyond their clothes, and their homes, even into their hearts. But you must wait until next month to hear more. The name of this story, each month, will be, “Side by Side.”
“The Other One.”
“Some folks has everything, and some folks has nothing.”
This is precisely what the sour-faced little girl, Hannah Bancroft, thought as she stood in the doorway and saw Helen’s mother bend over the bed and kiss her. Hannah was this favored Helen’s little nurse-girl, who had not yet been in the house twelve hours, and was taking her first peep at Helen and Helen’s room. She had never seen such a beautiful room before in her life! Lovely carpet, that looked as though somebody had been to the woods for mosses and ferns, and strewn them all over the room. Lovely paper on the wall, that on the stormiest winter days made the room look as though a golden sun was setting. Soft couches and easy-chairs, and a mantel filled with many pretty things. She thought of the one in which she had slept only two nights before; no carpet on the floor, no mantel at all, no chairs, only a wooden one with three legs, and part of the back broken off.
“I’ve something for my darling when she gets up,” the mother said, bending over Helen. “A nice surprise.”
“Mamma, you always have nice surprises,” said the little girl with a low, happy laugh.
“This is the nicest one mamma has found in many a day,” the mother said and she began to make preparations for the little girl to get up.
“Lazy thing!” said Hannah to herself. “Lying there and letting her mother hunt her shoes, and pick up her things. Why don’t she bound out and wait on herself? She is just horrid; I know she is.”
“MAMMA, YOU ALWAYS HAVE NICE SURPRISES,” SAID THE LITTLE GIRL.
“Now, darling,” said the mother, and she bent over the bed again, and to Hannah’s great surprise lifted the slight little form in her arms and carried her to an easy-chair. Then Hannah saw that the poor little feet were much smaller than they ought to be, and that there was a bandage around one of them.
“Didn’t you know that you were to be feet for my little girl?” Mrs. Stevens said, speaking to Hannah, an she saw her startled face.
“Can’t she walk at all?” was her dismayed answer.
“Not now,” the mother said, gently; “she is going to some day, we hope. You may come in now.”
“Mamma,” she said, “I can go visiting now whenever I want to, can’t I?” And that happy little laugh gurgled out; then almost in the same breath she said: “Mamma, what about the other one?”
“I don’t know about that yet,” the mother said. “I will leave you to plan for it.”
“The other one,” muttered Hannah. “What can she want of two?” The sullen look had come back.
“Don’t you think my new carriage is lovely?” Helen ventured this to the gloomy-faced little girl.
“Yes ’m,” said Hannah absently; “yes ’m, I s’pose so.”
“But you don’t think you would like it as well as walking?”—this with the least bit of a sigh. “I like it very much, though; it is such a rest to me. I haven’t walked a step in two years.”
She expected to see the gloomy face change into one of surprise and pity; but Hannah said, speaking almost fiercely: “I know a boy who hasn’t walked a step in five years.”
“Oh dear me!” There was instant sympathy in Helen’s voice. “Who is he? What is the matter with him? How old is he?”
“He’s my brother,” said Hannah in a gentler tone. “He is most twelve years old, but he is so little and weak, you wouldn’t think he was six. I can carry him just as easy! He had a very had fall when he was seven, and he won’t never walk again.”
“Poor little fellow! And has he a wheeled chair, and a couch that can be raised and let down, and a sponge pillow when his head aches, and oh! I don’t know: all sorts of nice things?”
“No,” said Hannah, the sullen look coming back; “he ain’t got nothing only a hard bed, and a chair with a cushion in, that mother made out of our old quilt.”
“Then I have found the ‘other one’ already,” said Helen joyfully.
“What?” said Hannah.
And Helen laughed.
“You don’t know what I mean. Why, you see long ago, when papa and mamma began to get me so many things to help me bear my trouble, we planned it that there should always be two bought, and the other one should be given to somebody who needed it, and couldn’t spare the money to get it. So I know there is another one of these lovely chairs, and your poor little brother shall be in it before night.”
Sure enough, the widow Bancroft received, just at noon, the strangest-looking parcel! It could only by great coaxing be gotten up her narrow stairs. All the rest—what the pale little fellow who had not walked a step in five years thought, and felt, and said, when he found himself actually going across the room on wheels, and what the mother thought as the tears rolled down her cheeks, and what Hannah thought as she looked on and remembered her cross sentence: “Some folks has everything, and some folks has nothing,”—I will leave you to imagine.
But then, you must remember that in the morning she had not heard anything about “the other one.”
Part II
The Three Little M’s —
For the first two or three moments, Mary was too frightened to think of anything but her heartbeats, which certainly, it seemed to her, must be heard a mile away.
“I wish—” thump, thump, thump,—“I’d—been—good,” at last she gasped out in a muffled sob. “Oh dear, dear! I want to go—home to—‘father!’”
Awl with a low wail of despair, she flung herself, a little heap of woe, on an old potato bag, and shut her eyes tight.
A wise old rat peered out from behind a pile of corn, stopping his nibbling long enough to stare at her.
“That child has been doing something wrong,” he nodded sagely to himself; and his little eyes gleamed. “‘I’ know the signs. Now I’m going to scare her.”
Thereupon, he rattled so suddenly among the dry kernels on the old floor that Mary shivered with fright.
“I shall be killed!” she cried, stuffing back her tears, to bound up into a sitting posture. “Oh, it’s rats! And they’ll eat me, every single speck of me, bones and all! Oh dear, dear, dear!”
With a wild fling of his hind legs, Mr. Rat flew across the little room from corner to corner, making such a noise that the little prisoner screamed in very terror.
“I—never—will—be—bad—again.” And then over she tumbled in a swoon.
Meantime, the little shop was all astir with excitement because the youngest of the bunch hadn’t come home.
“Pa,” exclaimed Martha, the little housekeeper, who, in her anxiety, had let all the bread burn to a cinder, “do, oh, do let me run down to Mrs. Smith’s and see if she’s there!”
“Oh, poor Mary!” cried Matilda, wringing her hands. “I know she’s lost, and she never ’ll come home, never, as long as she lives!”
“For the land sakes!” exclaimed Mr. Poser, throwing a stubby pencil, with which he was vainly trying to cast up accounts, down on the well-worn counter. “You’ll worry the life out of me, some of you will; an’ then ‘I’ shall be dead. There! Reach me my hat an’ stick, Marthy. I’ll go myself.”
GOING TO FIND MARY.
“I don’t worry you, pa,” said Matilda in a grieved may, turning back from the small cracked window out of which she was peering into the gathering dusk, for the first glimpse of the familiar little red hood.
“And I’m sure ‘I’ don’t,” broke in Martha, in a dreadfully injured tone, as she handed up the articles mentioned. “Do take that back, pa,” she begged.
“Well, somebody does,” said the old gentleman doggedly, putting his hat on his head with no gentle thrust, and grasping his stick, “so what odds does it make ‘who’ ’tis. There, keep a sharp eye on the shop, Matildy; an’, Marthy, run along to your work. I’ll be back soon.”
But he got no further than the door, for a big woman with a very determined face was marching in, and now confronted him sharply.
“Good day to you, Mr. Poser!” she exclaimed, with more the air of a policeman than an ordinary visitor, “I’d like to inquire where my quarter of a dollar is. ’Tisn’t often a chopping-bowl is so very high as the one I bought this morning. Not ‘very’ often.”
“‘Your quarter of a dollar!’” repeated the fat shop-keeper, glaring at his visitor in sheer astonishment. “Why, hain’t you got it? Where’s my Mary?” he demanded, in a tone to match hers in sharpness.
“I don’t know where your Mary is, nor any other folks’ Mary,” declared Mrs. Smith irritably, “an’ I’m sure I don’t care. All I want is my quarter of a dollar. I’d thank you for that.”
“I sent it by my youngest little gal,” said Mr. Poser, on a high key, and punching his stick on the floor to emphasize each word, “four good hours ago. Hain’t you seen her?”
In the babel that followed of tears and bewailings on the part of the two little sisters, Mrs. Smith protested three times solemnly on her word and honor, that she had not seen Mary Poser that day. Then she straightway magnanimously forgot the loss of her precious quarter of a dollar, and turned comforter at once.
“Oh, you’ll find her,” she said cheeringly; “don’t be afraid. A girl like her, such a run-about, always turns up like a cat.”
“There’s a last time to everythin’,” said Mr. Poser solemnly, “an’ I guess Mary’s run herself out this time.”
Which encouraging statement caused such fresh wails of despair, that Mrs. Smith was nearly frantic.
“Hush-sh!” she exclaimed warningly. “You’ll have the house down around your ears, if you don’t look out, with all your noise. I’ll go an’ see if I can’t find her. There, do be still!”
“I’ll go, too,” said Mr. Poser, waddling to the door.
“And I’m going, too! Oh, I am!” cried Matilda, rushing after him to grasp his hand.
“And I ain’t going to stay home alone,” exclaimed Martha, flying up, the tears running down her chubby face; “I want to go and look for my dear sister too.”
“You might as well let ’em come, Mr. Poser,” said Mrs. Smith decidedly. “They’ll scream themselves to death left behind. There now, we’ll soon find Mary safe and sound.”
So the whole procession left the little shop, and started on their dismal errand.