MAYBEE’S STEPPING-STONES.

WELCOME

MAYBEE’S
STEPPING-STONES.

BY
ARCHIE FELL,
AUTHOR OF “EARTHEN VESSELS,” “WORTH WHILE,” “APRON-STRINGS,” ETC.

“The gold of that land is good.”—Gen. 2:12.

BOSTON:
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY

To the
CHILDREN OF THE SABBATH SCHOOL,
INTO WHOSE HAPPY FACES
I HAVE LOOKED, FROM WEEK TO WEEK,
FOR SO MANY YEARS,
AND WHO HAVE LISTENED SO EAGERLY FOR THE SPOKEN
WORD, THOUGH NEVER SO UNWORTHY,
This little Volume
IS MOST LOVINGLY DEDICATED,
WITH A PRAYER
THAT IT MAY BE INDEED
TO THEM
STEPPING-STONES TOWARDS HEAVEN.

CONTENTS.

Maybee’s Stepping-Stones.

I.
MOTHER KNOWS BEST.

“But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him.”

“Tod’s coming!” said Maybee, dancing up and down on the doorstep.

“How do you suppose they’ll behave?” said Sue, taking books, lunch-basket, and two clean pocket-handkerchiefs from mamma’s careful hands. “Tod is so queer; and what shall I do with Maybee’s tongue?”

“Do exactly as you would be done by,” said mamma, smoothing the anxious little forehead. “Remember, everything will be new and strange, and keep the wee things under your own wing as much as possible. Be very gentle and patient, help them over all the hard places, and my word for it, they will be your most obedient servants. I think Mabel means to be very good and quiet,” she added, stooping to kiss the dimpled chin on the doorstep.

“Yes’m, ’course,” nodded Maybee, skipping away to meet the freckle-faced Theodore, six months her junior. “On’y my ap’n’s so slippery it will rattle, and Tod’s got starch in his shoes, so’s he can’t go very sofferly.”

Sue took Tod’s other hand and walked on in her most matronly manner.

“Good-morning,” said Bell Forbush, coming out of her gate. “You look for all the world like a hen with two chickens. Don’t tell me those tots are going to school.”

“Why not? Maybee is six,” returned Sue, dignifiedly, “and Tod wants to go everywhere she does, so aunty said he might.”

“They’ll be such a bother, only, of course, you can leave them quite by themselves; they’ll get broken in all the sooner.”

“Mamma expects I’ll take care of them,” said Sue, dropping behind with Bell.

“Oh, fudge! Grown-up folks never seem to think we need any better fun than looking after such small fry, when really they ought to wait on us. In English schools they call them fags, and make them run errands and everything. Now, take my advice, Sue Sherman: put those young ones in a front seat, and just let them know who is who to begin with. Fan is going to bring her croquet this morning.”

Mamma had said, “Be very gentle and patient, help them over the hard places, and they will be your obedient servants”; but to have them mind simply because they ought to was a deal easier, and besides, Sue was so fond of croquet and the children would only be in the way. “You mustn’t stir one inch till I come back,” she said, lifting the little dumpy figures into the seat Bell picked out, and running off, mallet in hand.

It just suited Maybee,—the shouting, laughing, and general confusion; but poor little Tod! He couldn’t hide his face on Maybee’s shoulder because it would “rumpfle” her “ap’on,” and so he hung his round flaxen head at a right angle very trying to his bit of a neck. It was such a relief when a tall, black-whiskered man rang a bell and it grew suddenly quiet. He liked the singing and reading, and he could even venture to look around when the hum of study and recitation began. Maybee, on the contrary, found that dull and tiresome.

But we can’t begin to tell all the day’s trials,—how Maybee crept away to where Sue and Bell were busy with slates and pencils, and was picked up by the stern Mr. Blackman and dropped back into her seat as if she had been a spelling-book, after which Tod didn’t dare wink when anybody was looking; and how Maybee crawled away again to an empty seat, and played “keep house” with the peanut-shells, bits of chalk and crumbs stowed away in the desk; how she meant just to touch her tongue to the ink-bottle, and tilted it up against her nose and all down the “slippery” white apron; how Sue gave them their lunch at noon, and sent them alone to the pump to wash; how Joe Travers sprinkled water all over them, and Tom Lawrence ran off with the “apple turnovers”; how somebody called Tod a “toad,” and tried to scrub off his freckles, and everybody else laughed at the way Maybee’s saucy little tongue sputtered, and her big black eyes blazed with indignation; how Tod’s miseries reached a climax, just before school was dismissed, in a loud outburst of grief, and how Mr. Blackman, with pity in his heart no doubt, but multiplication and mountains and a million or less of other matters in his head, laid a huge hand on the little yellow pate, stopping the flow of tears as suddenly as a patent stop-cock; and how the tears turned to a big fountain of revenge way down in the angry little heart, so that when Sue tied on their hats and bade them walk straight along home, behind Bell and herself, Tod broke out with an emphatic “You bet! my’ll knock ’ou over.”

“Why, The-od-erer Smith! you wicked boy!” exclaimed Maybee, very much shocked.

Bell and Sue were already some ways ahead, talking over their new hats.

“All ’em big toads say it,” pouted Tod, “an’ my’s going to gwow till my can pound ’em heads off.”

Poor little Tod! Both lips and heart blackened with the touch of evil, so much worse than the dust and ink on Maybee’s white apron.

When the girls stopped at Bell’s gate the little flaxen and brown heads had both disappeared.

“They’ve lagged behind on purpose. Come in and I’ll show you my new dress,” said Bell. Then Sue must see it tried on. Of course the children had gone right along home. Sue wasn’t so sure, but Bell talked so fast it was half an hour before she could get away.

“They may have gone to aunty’s,” said mamma, looking anxiously up and down the street, after Sue had stammered out something about “waiting,” and “supposing,” and “not thinking.”

But they were not at aunty’s, and the two mothers ran here and there, half wild with fright. Uncle Thed was out of town, but Papa Sherman was summoned from the bank; and in the gathering twilight, men, women, and children went hurrying about the village, across the outlying green fields, into the dark, lonesome woods. Sue, up-stairs, her face buried in the pillows, sobbed and moaned and listened.

Oh, if she had only kept fast hold of the little hands! if she had only kissed the tired, dirty little faces! If she had only taken mother’s advice instead of Bell’s! Such sorrowful “ifs”! And then on her knees she whispered over and over, “Dear Father in Heaven, if you will only bring them safe back, I’ll never—never—never forget mother knows better than all the little girls in the whole world.”

II.
LED INTO SIN—AND OUT.

“And He shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.”

Where were Tod and Maybee?

Half-way between the school-house and Bell Forbush’s, a sort of cart-path led off from the main road into Farmer Grey’s sugar-orchard, shaded with large, thick-leaved maples, carpeted with soft, green grass, and spangled with golden dandelions and buttercups.

“Isn’t it nice? S’ouldn’t ’ou like to go down it?” asked Tod, the new, “starched” shoes feeling, oh, so hot and dusty!

“Yes; but Sue wouldn’t let us,” said matter-of-fact Maybee.

“My don’t care, my will! ” returned Tod, shaking two soiled fists at Cousin Sue and her chatty friend. “Let’s wun.”

It was a sudden temptation, and Maybee yielded at once. Hand in hand they scampered down the cool, shady lane, never once stopping till the farther side of the orchard was reached. Then, how they rolled and tumbled in the fresh, green grass! What handfuls of daisies and violets they picked! and what a dear little brook they found, babbling along over the stones, and how fast and far they skipped along beside it, tossing in dandelions to see if the fishes liked butter, and launching bits of bark loaded with clover blossoms.

“Hello! What’s going on?” cried Dick Vance, the laziest, wickedest boy in school, now on the way after his father’s cows. Tod recognized one of his noon-time tormentors, and straightened himself up, muttering, “My’ll kill you, you bet!” with a furtive glance at Maybee, who was busy a little ways off, launching a whole fleet of maple-leaves.

“Ho! here’s a man for you,” cried Dick. “Ain’t he a stunner now! Regular man, he is.”

Tod relaxed a little at the compliment.

“Want me to make you a boat, a real boat with masts?” asked Dick, dropping down on the ground and opening his knife. Is there any magnet stronger than a knife to draw little boys to itself? Tod settled down just a few feet from the new-comer. Dick whittled and talked; Tod edged nearer and nearer.

“I wouldn’t make boats for many boys,” said Dick, “but you’re ’cute. If I had a sail, now! Let me have that red pocket-handkerchief of yours. By thunder! we’ll have a gay one.”

“By funder! my will,” echoed Tod, exactly as Dick meant he should.

Maybee had followed her little fleet quite out of sight. There was no one but the All-seeing Father up in heaven to hear, and Dick seldom thought of him; so he went on, saying vulgar, wicked words, and dreadful oaths, laughing till he had to hold his sides to hear Tod echo them in his droll baby-fashion. After a while Maybee came hurrying back into hearing of the low, mean words Dick was rattling off so glibly. Then she stopped.

“The-od-orer Smith, come right away, quick as ever you can!” she screamed, with her fingers in both ears. “My mamma says it’s catching-er than anything.”

Just then down went the sun behind the woods, and a great darkness settled suddenly around them.

“Who put ve light out?” asked Tod, huskily.

“God,” said Maybee, solemnly; and something in her large black eyes, uplifted so trustingly, checked the sneering laugh on Dick’s lips and made him slink quietly away, without even a whistle.

“Now let’s sit down and see God hang the stars out,” said Maybee.

“My don’t like it to be dark,” whined Tod.

“Why, don’t you merember what the verse says,—that one ’bout the chickens under their mamma’s wing?

“‘Dear little girl, dear little boy,

Afraid of the dark,

Bid your good-night to the daylight with joy,

Be glad of the night; for hark!

The darkness no danger at all can bring,

’Tis only the shadow of God’s kind wing.’

What you s’pose my mamma meant, ’bout Sue’s wing? ’course she don’t have any, but God does; on’y He’s so big we can’t see Him cover us all up safe. I like to feel Him though, don’t you?”

“No,” said Tod, “my’s afwaid of bears an’ fings.”

“Pho! it was naughty children the bears in the Bible eat,” returned Maybee,—which remark was sorry comfort to poor Tod.

“Ma-bel! Ma-a-b-e-ll!” called somebody away off in the distance.

“Oh my! I do b’lieve we’ve forgot to go home,” exclaimed Maybee, jumping up and pulling Tod in the direction of the voices.

You must imagine all the kissings and huggings, how soundly Tod slept all night, and how Sue kept pinching Maybee to be sure she was really there. The saddest thing is yet to be told.

At breakfast next morning Tod used some of the wicked words he had learned. Oh, how grieved and shocked his mamma was! Tod was positive he should “never do so any more,” after he had been away with her up-stairs and asked God to forgive him. But the very next day, although Sue scarcely left the children a moment, Dick contrived to coax Tod away, and persuade him it was manly to swagger and swear; and then Tod kept trying it a little all by himself, and somehow the bad words would slip out when he didn’t mean them to. Mamma talked and punished,—little punishments at first; then she tried scrubbing the inside of his mouth with soap-suds, and twice she shut him up a whole day, with nothing but bread and water. Still Tod persisted in “talking big,” as he called it, and at last, with tears in her eyes, mamma gave him over to Uncle Thed, who took him away into the library, and used a little stick just as Solomon says we must sometimes. Then he insisted on a whole long week without any good-night kisses from mamma, which almost broke poor Tod’s heart.

“My’ll never say ve bad, ugly words adin; my hates ’em!” he broke out one night, just as mamma was going down-stairs; and this time he kept his word.

Do you think they were cruel to the little boy? But you know Maybee’s white apron had to be soaked, and rubbed, and boiled, and bleached, before it was fit to wear again.

And so, although naughty Dick was sadly to blame, we are sure, when Tod is a man, he will be thankful for all the suffering which helped take away the stain of that dreadful sin from his heart and tongue.

III.
NAUGHTY DICK.

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

Whiz went a paper-wad past Ned Holden’s head. He didn’t need to look up from his Compound Interest to know where it came from: most of the mischief started with Dick Vance. Little Joe Burns, puzzling over c-o-u-g-h, b-o-u-g-h, d-o-u-g-h, caught a glimpse of Dick’s eyes through a pair of green goggles and giggled outright. Sue Sherman tripped and fell on her way to the grammar class, but the string was in Dick’s pocket before anybody saw it. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Wherever Dick was on the playground, there the boys played “for keeps,” cheated in “tallies,” swore over their quoits, and made ruinous bargains in jack-knives; and where Dick was, there too were more than two thirds of the other boys. You can easily guess he wasn’t an ugly, cross-grained, disobliging fellow. That isn’t the kind of stuff Satan chooses to make tools of. No one could learn more quickly than Dick, although he hated study and seldom had a perfect lesson; and a better-natured, kinder-hearted boy you couldn’t find in that school or any other. So whatever Dick said “Do,” the others generally did, and whatever Satan put into Dick’s head was generally the thing to be done. And Satan was leading him from bad to worse as fast as possible. A year ago, Dick would have scouted the idea of taking a twenty-five-cent scrip from Mr. Bower’s money-draw. It began with a few nuts “hooked” when Mr. Bowers was drawing molasses: it would end—where? Dick never stopped to think.

The week Tod began going to school, Dick played truant one day. It was the first time; for the boys, even the scape-grace Dick, stood very much in awe of Mr. Blackman.

“Won’t you catch it to-morrow?” said they all; but the next morning Dick walked coolly up to the master’s desk and presented a note of excuse. And then what a glee he set the boys into, telling how he had to pretend somebody was driving cows and one ran down a lane, and there was nobody to help but Dick, although it made him late at school, and Mr. Blackman would insist on his bringing an excuse. Just a word and his father’s name would do.

O Dick! You would have scorned that lie a year ago.

But now it seemed quite the thing; and when a large circus was advertised in an adjoining town, it was an easy matter to persuade, not only himself but Joe Travers also, there would be some way of getting round “old Blackman.”

Now, one thing is certain about a circus: there may be lots of good people there, but there is sure to be plenty of wicked ones, and Dick very naturally got among them,—fellows who had outgrown marbles and taken to cards.

Nothing else would have drawn Dick into the low drinking-saloon, or tempted him to taste the vile stuff sold there. They had a “Band of Hope” in school, and Dick had always stood by his pledge. But he was in for a “good time” to-day, and before he knew it had drank enough to make him reckless and quarrelsome.

Fortunately for Joe, that state of affairs disgusted him and sent him off home, tired and cross enough to confess anything. Fortunately or unfortunately for Dick, stumbling over the same ground several hours later, business had suddenly called his father out of town; his mother’s thoughts were all on her dairy and kitchen; to-morrow was Saturday,—no hurry about Mr. Blackman. Dick’s chief concern was how to keep a promise made his new acquaintances to go gunning the next Sunday. He had been brought up to respect the Sabbath, outwardly. Mr. Vance always shaved, put on his best clothes, and read his newspaper. Dick put on his best clothes and lounged on a sofa over the vilest trash put up in an illustrated weekly. Mr. Vance didn’t believe in any kind of religion. Mrs. Vance was always too tired to go to church. To them, it was man’s day of rest simply, not God’s Sun-day of light and love and praise. No wonder Dick seldom thought of the all-seeing Eye, looking straight down into his wicked heart, reading all his plans.

It was easy enough: wrong-doing so often is. He asked permission to spend the day at his grandfather’s, some four miles away. He frequently walked over there on Sunday; and getting an early start before his father was up he had nothing to do but take down the old gun from the shed-chamber and stroll away at his leisure. But long before noon Dick was thoroughly tired of being ordered about, sent to pick up the game, sworn at for being in the way, in short, of being made to feel his youngness,—not of the sin, nor of seeing the poor little birds and bright-eyed squirrels, to whom the sunshine and green trees meant so much, writhe and gasp, and die in his hand. He determined at last to strike out for himself in quite a different direction from the others. Up and down the woods he tramped. All the birds and beasts must have been taking their noonday nap; Dick grew impatient, and suddenly brought his gun to the ground, with an oath. There was a loud report, a stifled scream, and poor Dick lay senseless on the ground.

IV.
THE LITTLE RED HOUSE.

“In famine he shall redeem thee from death, and in war from the power of the sword.”

Such a funny little clatter! The birds waked up from their afternoon nap, and half a dozen brown nut-crackers stopped to listen, with one tooth just inside the tempting white kernel.

“I’m so glad we came home this way,” Maybee chattered on, quite unconscious of the scores of bright eyes watching her. “Only look, mamma! I guess here’s where the birdies and butterflies had their Sabbath School. So many yellow buttercups, just like little question-books, and daisies and violets for picture-cards; and don’t that funny little brook sound mos’ like a m’lodeon? Oh, see that birdie washing his face! How do you s’pose they merember which tree they live in? I guess their mammas are telling ’em Sunday stories now, they’re so still. Oh, my pity! Here’s all their dear little water-proofs,” and down dropped Maybee in a patch of dainty, nodding, pink lady’s slippers. So many, and such splendid long stems!

“What do you s’pose God made ’em all for?” said Maybee, thoughtfully, trotting after mamma with both hands full.

“I wonder if old Aunty McFane wouldn’t like a bunch to stand beside her bed?” smiled mamma.

“May I give her some my own self? ’cause there’s nobody to pick her any. Mose has to go straight to that rackety old mill soon’s he’s got breakfast, an’ Peter’s too little. ’Sides, Mose won’t let him go in the woods, ’cause he’ll get lost. I b’lieve I must run, mamma; I’m in such a hurry.”

She was back in a trice, however, pale and trembling. Hadn’t mamma heard something very dreadful? Mamma listened to little faint twitterings up in the tree-tops,—that was all,—and pinching the color back into the dimpled cheeks, they walked on, up the path leading to the low, red house where the McFanes lived.

Little brown sparrow sitting close under the eaves could have told them what Maybee heard; she had been watching the tumbled, dusty figure dragging itself slowly and painfully along across the fields from the woods. Poor Dick! It was such a long way to the little red cottage, and then when he tried to call somebody, everything grew strange and dark again; the queer little groan he gave was what Maybee heard. By and by he opened his eyes, but somehow he didn’t care to move or speak. He heard little brown sparrow twittering to herself up under the eaves; he heard the brook gurgling noisily along down in the hollow, and then he heard voices through the open window,—a thin, piping voice saying, “But God didn’t send any wavens to bwing it, gwan’ma, as he did to ’lijah.”

“No, deary; grandma didn’t say he would. You see, ma’am, I’ve told him stories to make him forget like he was hungry, and there’s none like those in the good Book. O ma’am! there’s nothing like that, and the harder things are, the tighter you can take hold of the promises. You mind, ma’am, when that baby was left on my hands an’ me only jest able to hobble round, and how at last it came to lying here from morning till night, with only Mose to help, out of mill hours; but that wasn’t nothing at all to having his work stop entirely, and the little we’d scraped together go and go, and he a-worrying an’ tryin’ to find something to do. Five weeks to-morrow! and last Monday we hadn’t a cent left. He’s tried everywhere for a job; that last tramp over to Luskill Mills is what ails his feet. Friday morning he couldn’t step a step, and not a thing in the house but some dry bread. We’ve never trusted Peter alone, so he dars’n’t go as far as the main road, an’ we’re quite a ways off of the path, even. But I knew the Lord could send somebody. He does hear when folks pray. Don’t you see, Peter, instead of the ravens he sent the kind lady?”

“We come home this way ’cause it was so hot,” put in Maybee; “but I do b’lieve He let Sue come tagging after, so’s mamma could send her home quick to bring you some supper, and p’raps He just made those flowers a-purpose; you know he sees to the sparrows.”

“Does He really?” thought Dick, looking up at the nest over his head. “I wish—but I suppose He knows how wicked I’ve been, and won’t care. I wonder if that’s Sue?”

A light, quick step went up the walk, followed by a scream of delight.

“You must excuse the little fellow, ma’am; he’s so ravenous,” said a man’s voice, and it trembled too. Dick wondered if he was crying. Then he heard the rattle of dishes and the hum of the tea-kettle, and by and by a pleasant voice bidding Sue run back and ask Dr. Helps to come and look at Moses’ feet.

“You won’t disbelieve again, will ye, Moses?” said the grandmother. “You see, ma’am, he couldn’t just believe God cared anything about us, and it’s dreadful to be in the dark and not feel sure there’s an Eye seeing the end from the beginning all along, and a Hand ready to help as soon as ever the right time comes.”

“I wonder if He saw me down in the woods,” thought Dick, dreamily, the voices sounding farther and farther away. “What was it grandpa used to tell me,—‘Remember the Sabbath day’; but I didn’t forget it; I never cared. I wish He wouldn’t look way down in my heart; it’s such a great Eye, and it sees all the bad. Oh, how bright it is, and it hurts so! If He only would go away!”

But the sun, which Dick fancied was the great all-seeing Eye, shone steadily down on the poor, pinched white face, and the voices inside went on:—

“It doesn’t seem, gran’mother, as if such a great Being could care for poor, wicked creatures like us.”

“He made the littlest flower, Moses, as well as the great mountains; and as for the wickedness, didn’t he let his own dear Son die just for us?”

“O me! I do b’le’ve I’m going to cry,” said Maybee, slipping past the doctor and around the corner of the house, full upon Dick, lying still and white, with a wild, staring look in his eyes.

Her screams summoned mamma and the doctor, who together carried him into the one front room of the cottage, and laid him on the “spare bed,” clean and white, if Mose had been sole housekeeper for many months.

“He mustn’t be moved again,” the doctor said; but “they could bring whatever they pleased to the cottage,” he added,—a hint Dick’s father wasn’t slow to take, for besides idolizing his boy, he was a kind-hearted man, and fairly shuddered when Maybee’s mamma told him how nearly starvation had come to the little red house.

Dick knew nobody that night nor for many days; but the sun, as it peeped in morning after morning, and crept reluctantly away at night, found out two things,—that Dick’s mother loved her boy better than her dairy, and that little Peter was growing fat and rosy on something besides “dry bread.”

V.
“DOT.”

“And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day.”

Dick opened his eyes one morning and began to wonder where he was. It seemed as if he had been sailing over mountain-tops and crawling about underground for years. And now, could anybody tell where he had waked up? It wasn’t like any room at the farm-house,—the white-washed walls, smoky ceiling, and bare floor. Such funny red posts to the bedstead, and a big, clumsy red chest under the window! On the chest were tumblers and bottles, and beside it, in a creaky wooden chair, sat a fat, jolly-looking woman, rocking away as if she had nothing else in the world to do. Where had Dick seen her before? Oh, he remembered! she came to their house when his mother had the fever last fall. Through an open door he could see a cooking-stove, a little red-haired, red-stockinged boy, playing with a Noah’s Ark, and another bed, with such a pleasant old lady’s face on the pillow,—such a happy, smiling face,—and a thin, wrinkled hand stroking lovingly a bunch of dry, faded flowers on the stand close by.

While he was watching her, somebody leaned over and kissed him. Dick’s eyes filled with tears, but he knew his mother through them. Only it was so queer for her to kiss him. He could just remember her doing it when he wore dresses, like the little red-haired boy. Since then she had been too busy; she always praised him when he ran errands promptly; she laughed at his jokes and tricks, kept his clothes clean and whole, and made him no end of pies and cakes. Indeed, she was always baking, brewing, churning, sweeping, dusting, mending, or sleeping. She came around the bed now, with a bright little porringer in her hand, gave him something nice to swallow, tucked the clothes around his shoulders, and told him to lie still. He shut his eyes, and was sound asleep before he knew it. When he opened them again the nurse was nodding in her chair, the tea-kettle singing on the stove, and the pleasant-faced old woman sat bolstered up in bed, with the little red-haired boy and our old friends, Maybee and Tod, curled up on the foot, listening with all their eyes and ears. So Dick listened too.

“You see we can’t do wrong,” she was saying, “without troubling somebody else, like the little black-and-white rabbit, you know.”

Peter nodded “Yes.” “No; what was it?” said Tod.

“Why, once there was a little black-and-white rabbit named Dot. He lived with his mother and sisters in a nice little house, in a nice large yard full of green grass. But he was always fretting and whining to get out and hop about the lawn and garden. He liked to nibble the trees and the tender green sauce. ‘Which is exactly what master says you mustn’t do,’ said his mother. ‘He’s mean,’ snarled Dot. ‘No, he isn’t; he gives you plenty to eat that’s nice, and besides, he says there are cruel boys and dogs outside. I advise you to listen to him,’ and Mrs. Bunny took a mouthful of fresh clover. ‘I’ll risk ’em,’ muttered Dot, digging away at the palings till he found a hole big enough to crawl through. ‘I wish you’d show me where the garden is,’ he asked the first boy he met. ‘To be sure. Perhaps you’d like me to carry you?’

“Dot was lazy and forgot all his mother’s warnings. He had a most delightsome ride, but, oh dear! at the end he found himself shoved, head first, into a low, dark box, with hardly room enough to turn around. There he stayed pretty nigh a week, with nothing to eat but coarse hay. His new friend tormented him almost to death, pulling his ears, pinching his nose, and punching him with sharp sticks, and at last he grew so thin he managed to squeeze through between his prison bars. Good or bad luck led him straight into a most beautiful garden, with beds of beets, turnips, radishes, celery, lettuce, everything tender and sweet as sunshine and dew could make it. He ate so much he could scarcely stir, and was just about to curl down under a currant-bush for a quiet snooze when a big man began pelting him with stones. Poor Dot! limping and panting he tried to find the gate, but had finally to crawl under a stone wall. He slept there that night, and didn’t dare even to stick his nose out the next morning till he was so hungry he couldn’t wait another moment. There was a nice clover-field close by, but he had hardly taken a nibble when up ran a big black dog, growling and barking, and there would have been an end of Dot but for a blackberry thicket. He dived into that, and Bose had too much regard for his sleek, fat sides to follow. Every few minutes, however, he would come capering back, and set Dot’s heart beating so he was sure it would come out of his mouth. Not for hours did he dare venture out, all bleeding and dirty, the forlornest looking creature you ever saw. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He was real thankful to see the white palings of his old home just ahead, but instead of going straight there, naughty Dot concluded to take a final stroll across the lawn and taste of the young fruit-trees in the orchard. It was an unfortunate time, for Harry’s papa—Harry was Dot’s little master—had just started to drive down the carriage-way, and Billy, although a very discreet old horse, was nevertheless woefully afraid of anything white. He shied suddenly at sight of Dot, overturned the buggy, and left poor Mr. Wells lying on the ground with three broken ribs.

“‘Such a bad, ungrateful, disobedient rabbit!’ groaned old Mrs. Bunny, when Dot at last crept back through the same hole he went out of. ‘See how much trouble you’ve made! Poor old Jones was depending on his garden-sauce to pay his rent; that Joe Barker got whipped for being late at school three mornings; and here’s master laid up for nobody knows how long.’

“‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had,’ grumbled Dot, snatching at the fresh, sweet clover. ‘How could I know whose garden ’twas, or imagine that great horse so silly as to jump at poor little me?’

“‘You couldn’t,’ returned his mother, gravely. ‘You aren’t old or wise enough. That’s why we need a Master to tell us just what to do. You see, things are all joined together somehow, and doing just one wrong thing is sure to make no end of a bother. Mark my word, there’s nothing like having a good master, and doing exactly as he says. If you don’t, there’ll be trouble all round, depend upon it.”

VI.
CHOOSING A MASTER.

“And Elijah said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him.”

Dick found lying still from morning till night very dull and tiresome. Mose was at work again, and as the good-natured nurse took upon herself the general house-work, which Mose had managed for more than a year under his grandmother’s direction, Dick was necessarily left alone a good part of the time. It was quite a relief when little Peter was allowed to scramble over the bed, asking questions by the score; still more delightful was it to be bolstered up in the big wooden rocker and drawn out into the cheery little kitchen beside cheery old Aunty McFane, who knew exactly the kind of bear stories boys like best to hear. It seemed a little strange nothing was said about his going home, and that lately his mother had so seldom come to see him.

One day when nurse had gone out to gossip with some of the neighbors, Dick’s patience gave way, and he broke out, with an oath,—

“Great deal folks care for a fellow,—not to come nigh him for most a week! Shut up in this hole, kept on slops, and the doctor running knives into you when he takes a notion.” Another oath finished the sentence.

“Didn’t you know, haven’t they told you your mother was sick?” said Aunty McFane, gravely.

Dick leaned back among his pillows, white and trembling. “How—why—what made her sick?” he stammered.

“She jest overdone, tending to her work and looking after you; and one day, when you was the worst, she came in the rain and got chilled through. She’s never been well sence, but she kept up till last week. She was better yesterday. I don’t think God means to take her from you just yet.”

Dick looked steadily at the old clock; the little mouse nibbling away in the pantry stopped to hear how loud it ticked through the stillness.

“It’s like the little black-and-white rabbit,—all comes of my going to the —— circus,” said Dick at length, with another oath. He didn’t mean to add that: it slipped out before he thought.

“Yes, it is like. Folks, as well as rabbits, need a good and wise Master,” said Aunty McFane, very soberly. “Do you know who is your master, Dicky?”

Dick moved uneasily. Ever since the day he was hurt, that great, all-seeing Eye had seemed to be looking straight into his naughty heart, and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

“I—suppose—it’s—God, if He’s everybody’s,” he said, in a low voice.

“Oh no! God hasn’t any servants only those who choose to obey him. It was Satan who told you to go to the circus, and coaxed you off gunning on the Sabbath, and put those dreadful words in your mouth just now. God’s commandments are very different. You know what they are, of course, Dicky?”

“The ten commandments? Grandpa used to tell me, but I—why, I keep most all of them, I guess. I don’t make ‘graven images.’”

“I don’t suppose you do yet, sonny, as the men do who worship their big stores and houses; but if we love anything better than we love God, it’s an idol, an’ I’m afraid you’ve got one idol named Self. And then there’s ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain,’”—Dick dropped his head,—“and this, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’”

A little lower drooped the red face.

“Honor thy father and mother.”

“I’m all right there,” cried Dick, suddenly straightening. “I never call my father the ‘old man,’ as some boys do, nor make as if I was too big to mind mother.”

“I’m glad of it, Dick; I hope you can plead ‘Not guilty’ to all the rest; only remember Jesus said, ‘Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer.’ And then there’s the ‘new commandment’ Christ gave us, ‘Love one another.’”

“There’s—I—you know, the other one, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ and I—I have taken things, little things, sometimes,” said Dick, hurriedly.

“O Dicky Vance! To think Satan could make a brave, kind-hearted boy like you into a thief. How does he pay you? By making you real happy and giving you lots of fun? At the circus the other day, for instance.”

“I should have had a good time if I hadn’t got in with those fellows.”

“But it’s just ‘those fellows’ Satan will always keep you with.”

“We had a tip-top time the other day; we played truant,” said Dick, eagerly. “We went fishing away up by the Crossing, and there didn’t a single bad thing happen. I don’t like stories where every bad boy gets drowned or something.”

“Nor I, either; but did you feel all right? Didn’t you have to keep looking round to see if anybody was coming, and go ever so far out of your way for fear of meeting some one?”

“Why, how did you know?” exclaimed Dick, in surprise.

“I didn’t; I only know it’s the way Satan’s servants mostly do. I shouldn’t think a boy like you would fancy that,—sneakin’ round, afraid to look in folks’ faces. Now, ain’t you ten times happier the days you learn all your lessons and mind the rules, than you was then?”

“I don’t try that often enough to know,” said Dick, laughing and coloring at the same time. “I’ve thought more’n once I would turn square round and keep right up to the mark; but it’s a plaguy bother to toe a straight crack.”

“Now, take my word, Dick, it isn’t half so hard as ’tis to toe Satan’s crooked ones; and besides, my Master helps his servants; he don’t call them servants, he calls them children. Only think! the great God, who made heaven and earth, letting us call him Father, hearing us when we pray, and promising to help us over all the hard places. Why, Dick, he would even help you get your lessons.”

Dick shook his head unbelievingly.

“But I’ve tried him,” continued Aunty McFane, earnestly. “I’ve tried him more than fifty years. He says he numbers the hairs of our heads, and there can’t be anything littler than that. And then he sent his only Son to die for us. We hadn’t done as the Master, who knew better than we, had told us to do, and so Jesus came to ‘save us’ from our sins. Does your master make any such way for you out of trouble? Which do you think is the best one to follow, Dick? because you can’t serve both; you must choose.”

Dick made no reply, and Aunty McFane, too wise to spoil what she had said by saying too much, closed her eyes as if to sleep. I think, way down in her heart, she was asking God to bless the poor boy and help him to choose then. By and by, laying one hand suddenly on his shoulder, she quietly said, “What would have become of you, Dick, if God hadn’t sent little Maybee here that day?”

Dick buried his face in his pillows and burst into tears.

VII.
TOD’S STRATAGEM.

“The God that answereth by fire, let him be God.”

“Come here, you little toad! Before I would play girl-plays the whole time!” cried Joe Travers, one of the big boys, to our little friend Tod, who was running as mail-agent between two of the pretty play-houses under the old oak.

Tod dropped the brown paper mail-bag as if it had burned him, and looked around. Maybee’s sharp little tongue was buzzing away in the farthest corner of the playground. Sue was busily “setting table.”

“Come over here, and we’ll have some jolly witch stories,” called Joe, persuasively; and over went Tod, leaving the poor mail bag, containing Sue’s invitation to a “kettledrum,” and Bell’s telegram for rooms at the Polygon Hotel, soaking in a little pool of water left from yesterday’s rain.

Tod had become a general favorite with both boys and girls. His shyness led him to choose the latter; but the boys, having discovered his fondness for “horrifying stories,” liked nothing better than to get him away by himself, and manufacture the most frightful tales possible on purpose to see the big blue eyes open to their widest extent, not caring a straw that they resolutely refused to shut at night unless mother was close by. To-day, however, Joe had only a simple witch story, about a little boy, stolen from his parents and brought up in a hovel, but finally rescued by the witch and restored to his real father, who lived in a splendid palace, etc. etc.

“Guess, then, him had bus’els of choc’late ca’mels, and riding-horses,” said Tod, smacking his lips.

“Don’t you wish you was that little boy?” put in Tom Lawrence, rather disappointed that Joe’s story was no more exciting.

“Well, but I know something,” said Joe, with a wink at the other boys. “I met an old woman this morning, an’ she told me—”

“What?” cried a dozen voices.

“Well, suppose Mr. Smith wasn’t Tod’s father.”

“My sha’n’t!” said Tod.

“Oh! you needn’t unless you want to; only if ’Squire Ellis was my father, and I could live in that big house on the hill, and have a pony and a dog and a gun and all sorts of things—”

“Did—she—say—my papa—was that great, big man with a cane what keeps that great big store an’ wides two horses to once?” asked Tod, excitedly.

“Oh, I can’t tell you any more, you’ll have to find out yourself,” returned Joe, very sure an idea, once lodged under the flaxen curls, would never lie still.

All the afternoon Tod thought it over. Every morning, of late, he had lingered in front of a new café, looking longingly at the snowy méringues, set off by dark, rich chocolate-browns. His sweet-tooth was one of Tod’s weakest points, and for that reason Papa Smith rather limited his supply of pocket-money, and seldom fished anything less harmless than peppermints out of his own pockets. Tod supposed it was simply from lack of means. Esq. Ellis, now, “could just buy that safe man out if he wanted to.”

“P-i-g, ponies,” spelled Tod, with such a grand plan in his head he could think of nothing else. When school was out he privately invited Maybee to a picnic in the grape-arbor at six that evening, and then, under pretence of going round by his father’s shop, set off alone up the main street. Straight into the big store he marched. Esq. Ellis was busily talking with a couple of men. Tod had been taught manners, and waited patiently beside him till the gentlemen turned to go, then he began: “Please will you—”

“Carter wants that order filled before six o’clock,” said a clerk coming up in the opposite direction.

Tod clutched at the broadcloth coat:—

“If you please—ice-cream an’ ca’mels,—they’re so jolly; an’ if—you know—I’m your little boy—couldn’t you just give me fifty cents right straight off, please? My wants it the very worse kind.”

The busy merchant glanced down into the earnest little face; the clerk touched his arm; he turned quickly.

“The impudence of these beggars! Scott, I thought I told you not to allow them inside. Is that bill made out for Edson & Dodge? And don’t forget Dorr is to have samples at once. How about Carter now?” and he hurried away.

Tod walked dejectedly to the door, his little heart swelling with grief at that horrid, horrid word “beggar.” What if his face and hands were grimy and his apron torn? “My guesses,—’t any rate, my’ll try the other one,” and off he flew up the street, around the corner, into his father’s office. Papa was there, talking to a man of course. Tod slipped one grimy hand into his and waited, choking back the grief that would keep the red lips in a quiver. And the moment the man was fairly gone, he sobbed out,—

“Please, papa, won’t you? it’s so jolly! Just fifty cents for ice-cream and ca’mels. My wanted a party so bad! but he wouldn’t, an’ she’s coming, you know.”

“If you please, sir, Thorpe is waiting to know about that No. 7,” said somebody in a white paper cap.

“In a moment, John,” said Mr. Smith, sitting down in his chair and taking Tod in his arms. “Now, papa’s little man, what is the matter?”

“Just fifty cents, please, papa, for Maybee and me to buy choc’late. My wants it so bad, papa,—jus’ the worst kind.”

“Dear me, that’s very bad, isn’t it? and Sweet-tooth has been very patient of late, to be sure. So Maybee is coming to a party! Well, well, there’s a bright, new, silver half-dollar. How’ll that do? because papa’s in a dreadful hurry.”

Nose, chin, whiskers and all,—how Tod covered them with kisses, squeezing his “own-y to-ny papa” tight as two little arms could.

“Guess my knew how to find out certain true,” he said, sitting with Maybee under the grape-arbor half an hour later, both faces well plastered with chocolate. “Guess the own papas see through a hurry, quick ’nough, when my asks ’em weal hard.”

VIII.
THE HELPING HAND.

“Will He plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me.”

When Dick came back to school you would scarcely have known him, he had grown so tall and stout. The younger boys looked up at him admiringly; the older ones held a little aloof.

It wasn’t at all the Dick who ran away to visit the circus a few months before. In the first place, this Dick was a travelled youth. As soon as his mother was able to ride out, the doctor had ordered them both up among the mountains to try what the clear, bracing air would do to mend matters. It was up there in a little nook among the rocks, with only a bit of blue sky looking in between the tall trees, his mother, with one hand laid lovingly upon his shoulder, had told him how sorry she was she had all these years been too busy to love and serve the kind Father above, who had spared their lives and given them so many blessings, and how she meant now to try and please Him first of all. Dick was very sure he meant to be a better boy, but he didn’t care to think much about God. Of course he could be good just as well. So this Dick went to church and Sabbath School; this Dick was trying not to swear, and no longer loafed about the street-corners and saloon-steps.

The boys had an idea it would be a very sober, stiff old Dick, but they soon found out their mistake. He was as full of fun as ever, only now he tried to keep it for playtimes. Study, however, was uphill work; he had been idle so long, and there were plenty of boys ready to laugh at his blunders, to tempt him into some sly fun, and especially to report every time he swore or broke a rule. Mr. Blackman, too, remembering the old Dick, was forever accusing him of this, that, and the other bit of mischief. Poor man! Wasn’t he tried almost out of his life with the care of so much perpetual motion, and hadn’t Dick always been the most troublesome screw in the machinery? And wasn’t it the most natural thing in the world, when anything went wrong, to give that the first twist?

The brook, beside which Dick gave Tod his first lesson in swearing, ran through a large field not far from the school-house. There the boys went to drill, to fly their kites, and to play base-ball. The brook was much wider there, with a high, steep bank on either side, and of late the boys had taken to walking across on the narrowest plank possible, balancing on one foot in the middle, turning somersaults, and otherwise imitating Blondin at Niagara. The water was shallow and the bottom sandy, so their frequent tumbles resulted in nothing worse than a wetting.

One day, as Tod stood by in open-mouthed astonishment at their performances, it occurred to Tom Lawrence what fun it would be to make the little fellow walk across.

“My couldn’t,” said Tod, his teeth chattering at the bare suggestion.

“Oh yes, you can,” joined in half a dozen boys, ready, as boys too often are, for any fun, no matter at whose expense. “Quick, now, or we’ll duck you!”

“Here comes Dick Vance; he’ll send him over quicker’n lightning,” cried Joe Travers.

Tod looked around at the tall, stout figure leaping the wall; almost a man, Dick seemed to him. Poor little Tod! he felt his doom was sealed, and trembled to the tips of his shiny shoes.

The boys crowded up, shouting, laughing.

“Make him go over there? Of course I can;” and Dick, swinging the little fellow upon one shoulder, bounded over the narrow plank before anybody had time to think.

The boys cheered lustily; boys are never slow to appreciate a daring deed. But “It isn’t fair!” “No play!” followed close upon the cheer.

“You’ll have to do it, Chicken Little, or they’ll make a prodigious row,” said Dick. “Look here, now. I’ll hold one hand all ready to catch you, and promise, sure as I live, you sha’n’t fall; and do you trot straight along without thinking anything about it. Why, it’s just as easy,—with me, you know.”

“You bet! By funder!” rejoined Tod, with a sudden explosion of bravery.

“Don’t let’s say that sort of words any more,” said Dick, looking ashamed and sorry. “Let’s just say we’ll try.”

“My will,” responded Tod, confidently, trudging on without looking to right or left. “My can do it, ’cause your hand is so big.”

Tod cheered as loudly as anybody when he was safe on terra firma again, and then the boys strolled off to base-ball. “What’s up now?” they wondered, as Dick struck off into the woods instead of joining them. “Oh! it’s that fuss this morning. Dick’s riled; got some of the old grit left.”

That morning Dick had made a mistake in putting an example in Long Division on the board; while he was diligently hunting it up, the boys in the back seat—of course Dick was yet in the lower classes—began to chuckle and cough provokingly. Tom Lawrence wiggled his fingers insultingly, and quick as a flash, Dick chalked out a head on the board, unmistakably Tom’s, with a big balloon for a body.

“So that’s the way you do examples!” said Mr. Blackman, coming up just as it was finished. “No wonder such a dunce calls nine times seven, sixty-four. Rub that sum out, sir, and do it over.”

Now, of course, Dick was wrong and Mr. Blackman was right; only, if the latter had known how hard Dick had studied that ninth table the night before, for fear he should fail, and how patiently he was trying to find his mistake when the boys began to laugh, he wouldn’t have spoken just so. Dick was quick-tempered,—such natures always are,—and in a trice he had swept figures and face from the board, and taken his seat.

“You are to put that example on the board again,” said the master; but Dick was firm as a rock; he couldn’t,—wouldn’t,—shouldn’t.

There the matter stood. Until he did, and at the same time made a public apology, Mr. Blackman would not consider him a pupil.

Dick sat down under a tree to think it over. Such a pity to leave school just as he was trying to learn something; but—put that example on the board again? He never could. Expelled! How grieved his mother would be; but a public apology,—never! To be sure, he ought to obey Mr. Blackman; he had really been trying to; but this,—this was too hard. How could he?

What was it Tod said? “My can, ’cause your hand is so big.” How queer that should remind him of his talk with old Aunty McFane, about masters! What did she say?

“My Master will help over all the hard places if you ask him.”

His mother prayed, Dick knew, but he had never really felt like it himself. God was so great; but then, he cared for the sparrows. He was so great? Why, that was the very reason he could help everybody. What was the text his mother had repeated only last Sabbath evening? “I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee.”

The boys stared the next morning, and some of them, I am sorry to say, sneered a little, when Dick, after saying, “I am sorry, sir,” went resolutely to work upon his example again; but Mr. Blackman shook him heartily by the hand, remarking,—

“Only keep on in this way, Dick, my boy, and you’ll surely make a worthy man as well as a fine scholar.”

And Dick, with a bright smile on his face, thought, “‘My can,’ because God’s hand is ‘so big,’ and he does help folks when they ask him.”

IX.
BELL’S BARGAIN.

And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.

Bell Forbush had told something very private to at least fifteen of the girls, nothing more or less than that her Cousin Mate, the dearest, prettiest cousin anybody ever had, was coming to stay at her house two whole months. She was grown up, and very stylish, so rich she didn’t know what to do with her money, and yet so good everybody loved her almost to death. For weeks after her arrival Bell regaled the girls with descriptions of Miss Marvin’s dresses and jewelry, the latter having a special fascination for Bell, particularly a necklace and cross, to possess which, she more than once hinted to Cousin Mate, would make her perfectly happy.

“My mother gave it to me just before she died,” her cousin had said very sadly, which ought to have made it sacred in Bell’s eyes. She had a father, mother, and two big brothers, while poor Cousin Mate was an orphan, with no nearer relative than Bell’s mamma. She was very kind to the little girl, too, letting her wear her coral pin and bracelets to school, and opening the pretty ebony jewel-case whenever Bell wanted to feast her eyes on the pearls and rubies inside.

But oh, that necklace and cross! There was nothing quite like that. Bell tried it on over all her dresses, and lay awake nights fancying how she would look at church in it, and what Nettie Rand would say to see her wearing such an elegant thing.

About this time Jenny King had a birthday. It came on Saturday, and she made a tea-party for her friends. Bell’s new white piqué was just finished, and Cousin Mate had given her a wide blue sash to wear with it. If she could only have the necklace and cross!

Wasn’t it queer Cousin Mate should happen to go away the day before, to stay over the Sabbath? Had she taken the necklace with her? Bell crept up-stairs just at dusk to see. Didn’t Cousin Mate always let her look at it whenever she liked? and, yes, there was the tiny key left in the ebony casket. Suppose she should wear it, what harm would it do? Cousin Mate would never know it, and it was only borrowing, any way. To be sure, she ought to ask leave, but—

Bell kept thinking it over,—how beautiful the soft shimmer of gold would be in the lace at the neck of her dress, and how the lovely pearl cross would gleam out from among the blue ribbons.

The more she thought, the more it seemed she really must. It wasn’t so very wrong, and something might happen: Miss Marvin might think it was lost, and she could keep it for her very own. At break of day she stole into the spare room again, and slipped the chain into the pocket of her new dress, ready to put on when she reached Mrs. King’s.

“I—mother—mother was afraid I—might lose it—under my shawl,” she explained to that lady, who offered to clasp it for her, saying, It is something quite new, isn’t it, dear?——”

“Oh! it—it is Cousin Mate’s; she—she lent it to me,” stammered Bell.

“I didn’t believe it was yours,” said Nettie Rand, provokingly.

“It isn’t mine yet,” returned Bell, reddening, “but Cousin Mate has just as good as promised it to me.”

Ah, Bell! there is no addition like that Satan sets us to do.

But how heavy the little chain grew before night! or was it the sense of wrong-doing made the time drag so wearily to Bell, and made her so glad to wrap her shawl over the long-coveted possession and hurry home through the dusk? Who should meet her on the steps but Cousin Mate herself, returned unexpectedly, and ready, as she always was, to take off the little girl’s hat and give her a kiss.

“I—I—it’s cold,” said Bell, holding her shawl tightly together,—“and—and I want—something up-stairs.”

Straight to the spare chamber she hurried, and unpinned her shawl. The necklace was gone. She looked on the floor, on the stairs, shook her shawl and wrung her hands; but it was surely gone. It was there when she left Mrs. King’s. If she had only put it in her pocket! but she was afraid Nettie Rand would laugh. She couldn’t go back. Would anybody find it? Should she ever see it again?

She went slowly down to the parlor.

“It’s very strange,” mamma was saying, “Katy has been with us too long to doubt her honesty, but this new second-girl,—it must be. Of course the chain could not go off without hands. I took the poor girl out of pity, and she has seemed so anxious to please. Oh dear! there’s no knowing whom to trust.”

Bell slid into a chair, pale and trembling. So Cousin Mate had missed her chain, and thought the new girl had taken it. Her first feeling was one of relief. Then she wondered if they would send the poor girl to states-prison, and what the end of it would be.

“You are all tired out, aren’t you, dear? playing so hard,” remarked her mother, by and by. “You had better go straight to bed.”

Cousin Mate offered to go up with her as she often had of late. Bell talked as fast as she could, pulling off half her boot buttons in her haste. As she stood up to have her dress unfastened, something slid to the floor,—something bright and shining; and there it lay,—the necklace, telling its own story. Bell sank in a little tumbled heap beside it, covering her face with both hands.

“Oh, my little Bell! would you have sold yourself for that?” asked Cousin Mate, dropping down in turn beside her, and drawing the whole little heap into her lap. “Would you have sold yourself for that?” she repeated, uncovering the shame-stricken eyes with one hand, and holding up the necklace with the other.

“Sell myself!” echoed Bell, wonderingly.

“Oh my little Bell, would you have sold yourself for that?”—Page 70.

“Yes; you know Satan is always trying to make bargains with us. Did you stop to think how much you paid him for this? First, that most precious of all gems—Truth, which you can wear forever in Heaven, while this, you know, moth and rust can corrupt, and thieves steal away from you. And then did you forget, Bell, that this sin, unrepented of, could shut you out of heaven? Would you give up that beautiful home for this poor little trinket, my darling? And didn’t you forget, too, that God was looking down upon you, so grieved and sorry? Wasn’t it a very poor bargain, dear? Would you take the necklace for your very own at such a price?”

“No, no! I never want to see it again,” sobbed Bell. “Oh! what shall I do?”

“I will tell you what God said once to his disobedient people,” said Cousin Mate, softly: “‘Ye have sold yourselves for nought,’ ‘Ye shall be redeemed without money.’ You know how He ‘redeemed’ them, Bell, and Who it is that ‘was wounded for our transgressions.’”

X.
WALKING WITH GOD.

And Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him.

Miss Cox, Sue’s Sabbath School teacher, was absent, and Miss Marvin, Bell’s cousin, heard the class. Bell was in it, and Nettie Rand, Jenny King, Sarah Ellis, Dick Vance, Robert Rand, Varney Lowe, and Will Carter,—five girls and four boys. The lesson was on Elijah, and the boys were exceedingly interested in speculations about the chariot of fire, its probable appearance, and did Miss Marvin think Enoch had a chariot too?

“It seems the writer of Enoch’s memoir thought that of very little importance; at least, he said nothing about it,” rejoined Miss Marvin, smiling. “But then he only used fifty-three words any way; and yet how much we seem to know about Enoch. Did you ever think of it?”

“Memoirs are awfully stupid; most always there’s three volumes,” said Varney Lowe.

“Paul wrote the second volume of Enoch’s,” said Miss Marvin. “You will find it in Hebrews, eleventh chapter, fifth verse. But there are only thirty-two words in that.”

“It doesn’t say much in Genesis,” said Jenny King, who had opened her Bible, “only how long he lived and that Methuselah was his son.”

“And that God took him,” added Sarah Ellis, who had opened her Bible too.

“One other and best thing of all, twice repeated,—don’t you see it?” asked Miss Marvin.

“Oh, yes; that ‘he walked with God’; but I never could understand really what it meant.”

“What is the first thing necessary when two people walk together?”

“To keep step,” answered Will Carter, who was captain of the “Young Rangers.”

“And to do that they must be agreed, mustn’t they? have one common impulse, do the same thing.”

“But we can’t do what God does,” said Sarah Ellis, in a tone of surprise.

“Can’t we? What does God do?”

“Why, he makes everything and keeps making it beautiful, and takes care of everything and everybody.”

“And isn’t that what he wants us to do? to help beautify this world of his, just the little bit right around us, helping ourselves and others up into better things as fast and as far as we can? I think that was what Enoch did. What else is necessary for people to walk happily together?”

“They must like the same things,” said Dick, “or they won’t have anything to talk about.”

“Very true: Enoch must have loved what God loved, and so should we. God loves truth and holiness, everything pure and noble and good, and he hates sin. What next?”

“They must love each other,” suggested Sue.

“Yes, indeed; two will never walk together long unless they love one another. God loves everybody, and Enoch must have loved God or he couldn’t have walked with him. God said to those who refused to walk in his ways, ‘All day long have I stretched forth my hand, but no man regardeth.’ That reminds me of what I saw coming to church this morning. A gentleman was walking across the fields, with a dear little yellow-haired boy beside him, who tried his best to take as long steps as his father.”

“I most know it was Tod,” whispered Sue.

“You all know the stepping-stones across the marsh where the mud is so black,” continued Miss Marvin. “The stones are some ways apart, and the little fellow drew back doubtfully; but after a while, taking hold of his father’s hand, he began jumping from one to the other. Perhaps you remember a little stream of water trickles between the last two stones, and there he stopped again. His father smiled, and held out his other hand, and without waiting a second the boy seized hold of it and sprang across, straight into his father’s arms. I saw the gentleman hold him tightly, and give him half a dozen kisses before he set him down. He was so glad, you see, to have his little son trust him so entirely. Now, it seems to me that is the way Enoch ‘walked with God.’ Paul says ‘he pleased God,’ and I think it was because he trusted Him, just as that little boy did his father. God is our father, you know, strong and wise enough to lead us.”

Tinkle, tinkle went the superintendent’s bell.

“I wish you’d hear our class next Sabbath,” said Dick. “Miss Cox never tells us anything only what’s in the book.”

“There is more in the book than we can ever learn,” said Miss Marvin, pleasantly. “We want to help each other find out what it means and obey it. I’ll tell you what I will do. If you will all come to Bell’s next Saturday night we will study the lesson together,—as many as would like to, I mean.”

“May I come?” asked Maybee, who had stopped to wait for Sue.

“Yes, indeed, the more the better; and I’ve a pretty bit of poetry perhaps you will like to learn. Now, good-by.”

“Don’t you think—does it seem quite fair—you know it would be so much nicer to go up in a chariot than to be sick and die; and to think only just two! Shouldn’t you like it better?” asked Sarah Ellis, lingering till the others were all gone.

Miss Marvin glanced out at the open door, from which the elegant carriage belonging to the child’s uncle, Esquire Ellis, had just driven away, then back to the faded muslin dress and plain straw hat beside her. Sarah’s mother was a widow, and supported herself and daughter by doing fine sewing.

“We must remember this,” she said, slowly, looking down into the uplifted eyes: “if we really trust God he will surely lead us by the very best way to himself; and when we are with him up there it will make little difference how he took us from down here.”

“I must send her my ‘Brown-Haired Bess’ that I’ve promised Maybee,” said Miss Marvin to herself, as Sarah walked thoughtfully away. “I believe the ‘hidden life’ is beginning to show in that sweet, earnest face.”

XI.
BROWN-HAIRED BESS.

“They said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.” 2 Kings 2:15.

Fan, handkerchief, and gloves in waiting lay;

She turned them gently over,—brown-haired Bess,

Stroked each one fondly, then looked up to say,

“There’s lilies, mamma, in your drawer, I guess.”

Mamma smiled down upon the upturned face,

And ’gainst the rosy cheek she softly laid

A letter. “Oh! they made it in the place

Where violets blossom,” said the little maid.

All out of sight and sound played noisy Fred;

Came in, so happy, when the sun went down.

“Out in the field you’ve been,” his mother said,

“Among the clover and the grass, new-mown.”

“How could you tell? Oh! I know,” laughed the boy,

“I’ve caught the sweet, and brought it all away;

Just so, you said, I’d bring a pain or joy,

As with the bad or good I chose to play.

“And in my lesson on the apostles bold,

It said, ‘They’d been with Jesus.’ Did it mean

They brought away the pleasant things he told,

And showed to other men what they had seen?”

So brown-haired Bess, trying the livelong day,

To be obedient, patient, loving, true,

Serving the Master in her child-like way,

Can show as plainly as the violets blue

The fragrance of a life “hid evermore

With God, in Christ.” Lord, humbly we implore

Thy Spirit on each little child may rest,

And make them, one and all, forever blest!

XII.
MAYBEE’S STEPPING-STONES.

“But God is the judge; he putteth down one, and setteth up another.”

A hard, driving, northeast storm. No hope of its breaking away at noon; no getting out with water-proof and rubbers, even; no Sabbath School,—“nothing but a great, long, dull, tiresome day,” Sue said, sitting down to breakfast with a face as cloudy as the sky.

“’Thout papa preaches, and mamma sings, and we make-believe meeting it,” rejoined Maybee, inclined to find a bright side.

Around the breakfast-table on Sabbath mornings, everybody at Mr. Sherman’s was expected to recite a text of Scripture, and that morning it happened papa and Maybee had chosen the same one: “But God is the judge; he putteth down one, and setteth up another.”

“Suppose,” said papa, “we take that for a text, and write a sermon,—Sue, Maybee, and I; Sue, with her Concordance, shall look out in the Bible the sort of people God ‘putteth down’ and ‘setteth up’; and Maybee, with mamma’s help, shall find the names of some of them. Then, when I come back from morning service, we’ll put our heads together and make an application.”

What a short forenoon it seemed! Right after lunch they were to meet in the library. Maybee drew a big chair behind papa’s desk for a pulpit, and placed the chairs in rows for the pews. Then it occurred to her, with mamma for choir, there was nobody left for congregation, and she coaxed Bridget in from the kitchen, rather against that individual’s inclination.

First they sang the Sabbath School hymn, “Better than thrones”; then papa prayed a short prayer, so simple Maybee could understand every word, after which he gave out the text, and called upon Sue for her part of the sermon. Sue had it neatly written out, and read,—

“Very well. Now, Maybee.”—

And Maybee counted off on her fingers, carefully using her right hand for the good men, “Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon”; and then with her left hand, “Pharaoh, Saul, Jeroboam,—and—and—I can’t think, but lots of little bits of kings what wouldn’t mind him.”

“Does the text mean God always promotes the good and puts down the wicked?” asked papa.

“Oh, it can’t,” returned Sue, “because there’s Esq. Ellis, ever so rich, and he never goes to church; and Say Ellis’s mother is real poor, and just as good as she can be. And you know Varney Lowe’s father has failed, and everybody calls him good.”

“They don’t live in the Bible,—that’s why,” said Maybee. “God put all my wicked folks right down, and let all the good ones have real nice times.”

“How was it with poor David when he was hiding away from Saul?”

“Oh, I see!” cried Sue. “It means He will, sometime; but”—and her face clouded again—“there’s Aunty McFane, just as patient and good; she’s always had dreadful times, and she’s so old she can’t live a great while longer.”

“God may not think best to ‘lift her up,’ till he takes her to himself,” observed mamma.

“Then we can’t tell anything about it, now, as they did in the Bible.”

“Don’t you remember when we went to the review of troops,” said her father, “we couldn’t see any order or reason in all the marching and counter-marching; but there was the General on horse-back, with all the whys and wherefores in his mind. We could see it a little more plainly after we climbed that high hill, and looked right down upon them. And so when we ‘get up higher,’ we may know more of God’s plans than we do down here. Meanwhile, the text is to teach us, that he is the great Commander and Judge, doing just what he pleases with his creatures. It is for us to trust he will work out the very best plan possible.”

“I can’t just see why he lets good folks have any bad times,” said Maybee.

“Once, when you and Tod were very little, you were making mud-pies in the garden, having a splendid time; and Aunt Sue came and took Tod away to be washed and dressed. They were all going to a picnic on Beech Island, where he would have ever so much more fun; but the poor little fellow couldn’t understand that, and screamed and cried all the time they were getting him ready.”

“Getting ready’s horrid, anyway,” said Maybee.

“Oh no,” said Sue, “not if we keep thinking of what is going to be.”

“That’s it,” said papa. “And we are put into this world to ‘get ready’ for heaven. You know we must be washed in the blood of Christ and clothed with his righteousness before we can enter that beautiful land, and when God takes anything from us that would hinder our getting ready, we need not mind when we think of what is ‘going to be.’ I remember, too, how afraid Tod was that day, of the cars and boat, and how he fretted because Uncle Thed wouldn’t let him walk instead of carrying him over the sand and rocks. So we often grumble at things in our lives,—things God means shall help us along faster towards heaven. We are always wanting to try our own ways.”

“Just as I did the time Maybee was lost,” said Sue. “I think I shall always be sure mother knows best, now.”

“And that is a long step towards trusting our Father in heaven,” said papa pleasantly.

“Oh, oh! see the sun!” cried Maybee; “and there’s Uncle Thed and Tod going home from church.”

“Guess my new wubber boots wasn’t afwaid of the wain,” said Tod, running in and holding up one foot triumphantly. “We comed over the stepping-stones, too. Oh, my! an’ the mud’s all water, now; covers ’em most up.”

“Those stepping-stones are just a nuisance,” remarked Sue. “I wish they’d build a nice plank walk over the marsh.”

“My don’t,” said Tod. “It’s weal fun to take tight hold of papa’s hand and let him step you wight along.”

Uncle Thed lifted Tod on his knee.

“Were you having a meeting here, and isn’t it through?” he asked.

“We were just seeing how far we’d got to heaven; I mean, how was the best way,” said Maybee. “And Sue was so frightened when Tod and me was lost, she won’t never do so again. That’s a step, you know.”

“Dick an’ me isn’t never going to say ‘By funder’ no more, neither,” said Tod complacently.

“Isn’t Dick just as different as can be?” said Sue. “Only think, mamma, if you hadn’t gone into Aunty McFane’s that day—”

“Oh, yes,” put in Maybee, “I’m going always to b’lieve God takes care of everybody when they ask him.”

“And how little squirrels ought to mind their masters, and boys too, my guesses,” added Tod, reminded of Aunty McFane’s story.

“Dick told Miss Marvin the other Sabbath,” said Sue, “that he wished everybody knew what a good master God was. Will Carter laughed, and coming home he asked Dick how many prayers he said a day. I know Dick was real angry, he turned so red and then white, and he didn’t speak for ever so long. Then he asked Will if he didn’t like to ask his father for things he wanted, and why one need to be any more ashamed of praying. Say Ellis said she wished she could walk with God the way Miss Marvin said it meant. Do you believe children can?”

“Why not?” said Mr. Sherman, “if they do as Tod does about the stepping-stones,—take fast hold of God’s hand and let him lead them.”

“And then they’ll be like ‘Brown-Haired Bess,’ and folks’ll know they’re ’quainted with Jesus,” said Maybee.

“Guess they’d better have their own papa,” put in Tod. “Ain’t any use to ask th’ other folks.”

“Exactly,” said Maybee’s papa. “Now let’s sing ‘Nearer, my God, to thee,’ and dismiss our meeting.”

While they were putting back the chairs Maybee told her mother what Miss Marvin had said about the stepping-stones, and how it must have been Uncle Thed and Tod, because she saw Uncle Thed hug Tod to-day when he told about them.

“Don’t you s’pose,” said Maybee thoughtfully, “that’s why God has stepping-stones up to heaven ’stead of a plank walk?”

PART SECOND.

I.
BETTER THAN “A RICH COUSIN.”

“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”

Miss Cox had found a destitute family down by the Mills, and enlisted the girls of her Sabbath School class to provide suitable clothing, in which the children could come to church.

They were to meet at her house Saturday afternoon to sew, having, the Sabbath before, brought what money they could to purchase material. Bell Forbush had given a whole dollar, while poor Sarah Ellis shook her head sorrowfully when asked for her mite.

“But you will come and sew, and that will do just as well,” said Miss Cox, putting down twenty-five cents for Sue Sherman.

“I gave every bit of my pocket-money,” whispered Bell to Sue; “but, you see, Cousin Mate will give me some more if I just ask her; for, don’t you think, she’s going to stay all summer, and she has such lots of money she’s always giving me some.”

Sue was more than half inclined to envy Bell this stroke of good luck in the shape of a rich cousin. She quite envied her the next Saturday afternoon. It sounded so grand for Bell to say whenever anything was found to be lacking, “O Miss Cox! I will give that. I’ll run right over to the store this minute.”

Buttons, trimmings, handkerchiefs, hair-ribbons, even,—“I had no idea we should make out such complete outfits, and so pretty,” said Miss Cox, “and we shouldn’t but for you, Bell.”

“Bell will certainly become bankrupt if she keeps on,” said Jenny King.

“Not while she has a rich cousin to go to,” said Nettie Rand, in her provoking way.

Bell colored, but had the readiness to say frankly, “that’s the secret of it. Cousin Mate wants me to be benevolent, and has promised to find all the money I need.”

“Great way of being benevolent, that is!” said Nettie, tossing her head.

“It’s doing good just the same,” rejoined Sue, standing up for her friend, “only it must be real nice and easy to know whatever you want is to be had just for the asking.”

Say Ellis looked up with a bright smile, but she said nothing.

“We are very much obliged to Miss Marvin and to Bell too,” remarked Miss Cox, basting away on the last little sacque. “The younger ones are all provided for now, but there’s an older girl. I can’t even get a chance to speak to her yet; folks say she’s a wild, high-flyer of a thing, with an ugly temper, and that she uses dreadful language. I don’t know as we can do anything—”

“Oh! that Tryphosa Harte,” interrupted Nettie. “She’s perfectly horrid. It’s that girl who stood on the steps and mimicked us, the other night, Bell.”

“She’s just about your size, isn’t she?” resumed Miss Cox; “and I was thinking, if each of you should give her something of your own,—things you had done wearing of course, but tasty and like other people’s, dress her up real pretty, you know,—and all take some sort of interest in her, we might get her into Sabbath School and help her be somebody. They say she’s uncommonly smart.”

“But, Miss Cox, she makes all manner of fun of anything good. I’ll ask mother to give her my last summer’s sacque, but I shouldn’t dare speak to her,” exclaimed Sue.

“I could give her one of my cambric dresses and I dare say Cousin Mate would get her a hat, but she’s so disagreeable I never want to go near her,” said Bell.

“It wouldn’t be a bit of use, I know,” put in Nettie Rand. “She’d only laugh in our faces the minute we said Sabbath School to her; and I think it’s hard work enough to ask folks to be good when they treat you decent. I dare say father would give her a pair of shoes, but they’d never walk into church, I’m sure of that.”

“I should call it casting pearls before swine,” laughed Jenny King. “Please, Miss Cox, don’t set us to driving any but little pigs into Sabbath School: you can coax round them easy, but that Tryphosa Harte,—it would take the meekness of Moses to begin with, and the patience of Job to hold out. I know meekness and patience and perseverance are nice things to have, but, you see, none of us has a rich cousin to keep us supplied with that sort of pocket-money.”

Again Say Ellis looked up, with a flash of sunshine in her mild, blue eyes, and this time she spoke:—

“I’d like—to try, Miss Cox. I never spoke to her but once, and then she threw mud at me, but I could—try; and I’d like—to give something. Would a pair of stockings—”

“Yes, indeed; she’ll need everything, I suppose,” said Miss Cox warmly. “If you would try, Sarah dear. I have an idea one of you would succeed much better than I.”

“Whatever did you offer for?” asked Jenny King, as she and Sarah walked home together. “It will be just a waste of kindness.”

“But if there’s plenty more to be had, we needn’t mind,” said Say, smiling.

Jenny stared, and then said slowly, “But I do mind having a dirty, ragged thing like that turn up her nose at me. You just try how it feels a few times, and—”

“But don’t you know—I was thinking—I’m sure it’s something like,” stammered Say.

“What are you getting at?” laughed Jenny good-naturedly, as they stopped before the gate of the small cottage where Sarah lived.

“Why, you said we hadn’t any rich cousin to give us patience and meekness, and I thought, wasn’t God a great deal better, because, you know, it was in our Sabbath School lesson,—Whatsoever we ask, He can give it to us. Only think,—whatsoever!”

“Yes, but I never thought of taking it so, really.”

“I thought of it when Sue said it must be nice to know we could have anything we wanted. You see, I couldn’t give any money, because mother has to work so hard, and I wondered supposing I had and asked God to make it up, if he would. And when it came to doing something, I was sure he’d help if we all prayed. I wanted to ask the girls to, but I didn’t quite dare.”

“Isn’t it queer,” said Jenny thoughtfully, “how afraid we are to talk about such things to each other? Now, we asked Bell to ask her cousin for a dozen things, and it isn’t so very different asking God, only that he’s so great.”

“Which makes it so much the better, and he has—different things, you know, patience, and love.”

“Oh dear! it’s such hard work to use those things, I’m afraid I don’t want them much,” sighed Jenny; “but I’ll pray about Tryphosa. I begin to pity her more already.”

“Going to give away your stockings!” exclaimed Tilly Ellis, Sarah’s little sister, that night, as the latter was looking over her one small drawer of underclothing. Neat, and whole, and enough, but very little to spare: that told the whole story at the Ellis’s.

“Yes, Tilly; you know God wants us to do good, and he’s promised to give us everything we need, and I think he’ll show me how I can earn some more. I’m going to try it anyway, because if I didn’t give her something, she wouldn’t know I really wanted to help her.”

Tilly was too sleepy to ask who “her” was; and the next thing either of them knew, it was the Sabbath morning, and the birds were holding a praise-meeting under their chamber-window.

II.
TRYPHOSA.

“Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.”

All Say’s attempts the next week to make Miss Tryphosa’s acquaintance were unsuccessful. Once a small boy directed her to the wrong street; once a drunken man reeled against her on the narrow side-walk, and frightened her back; another time, the door was locked. At last, however, she gained admittance, having been vociferously welcomed at the gate by all the younger children. Mrs. Harte set her a chair, remarked, “Tryphosy was som’eres round,” and went back to her wash-tub. Say did her best with “the weather,” the “health of the family,” and “the hard times.” “Yes” and “No” was all the help she had. The room was hot and close with steam from the “suds,” the stove smoked, the children fingered her from top to toe, and after waiting nearly an hour she was glad to make her escape.

“Call again. See you any time!” sounded from somewhere in mid-air as she went down the rickety steps. She looked up, and from amongst the woodbine which ran all over the roof of the old house recognized the face she was in pursuit of.

“Oh, please, are you Tryphosa? Do come down! I want to see you very much,” she said earnestly.

“Catch a weasel asleep!” “Does your mother know you’re out?” “Ain’t we fine!” and then followed a string of oaths which made poor Say cover her ears and hurry home as fast as she could.

She had no idea of giving it up, however.

In one corner of the yard, right amongst the thistles and bitter weeds, she had noticed a little patch of fresh earth, where had been set a bunch of columbine, two tiger-lilies, a scraggly rose-bush, and one bright, pert, little pansy. On the Sabbath she asked the children whose it was.

“Oh! that Phosy’s,” they said. “She thinks a sight of that garding. Wasn’t she hoppin’ mad last night, ’cause pa pulled up the holly-hocks Bill Finnegan had just bringed her!” Bill worked at the Squire’s, where they “had posies as was posies.”

Early Monday morning Say took up her one pet scarlet geranium. There were half a dozen others, but none so full of buds, none she had so closely watched from the first slipping. She didn’t even wait to eat her breakfast, for fear of missing Tryphosa.

“Here, let alone! What you after now?” called out the same coarse voice, from up in the woodbine, as Say stooped over the forlorn little flower-bed, transplanting her geranium.

“I’ve brought something for you. Come and see if you like it,” said Say, without raising her eyes.

A rumble, tumble, thump,—and the weird, wicked-looking face was thrust close to her own. “What’d you bring it for?”

“Because it was so pretty I wanted you to have it,” returned Say, pressing the earth firmly around the roots.

“Don’t tell me! You’ve got an axe to grind,” said the girl, a smile lurking around the full, red lips and dull, dark eyes in spite of her frown.

“No, I haven’t; that is, I do want something, but it’s something you’ll like. We thought—we want ever so much that you should come to Sabbath School.”

“I’d look well, wouldn’t I?” and Tryphosa, who had leaned over to finger the bright, scarlet blossoms, straightened herself, and glanced down defiantly at her ragged dress and bare feet.

“No, we’ve some real nice clothes, our very own; you’re just as big as we, and if you’ll come——”

“Well, I ain’t a going to. ‘Betty, put the kettle on,’” and away went Tryphosa, to reappear in a moment on the roof among the woodbine, where she sang and shouted till Say had turned the farthest corner.

Say went to bed that night utterly discouraged, but the next morning she was bright and hopeful as ever. Was it because she so earnestly asked the Father to give her, out of his abundance, more patience and perseverance?

Wednesday night, slipping one of her two pairs of pretty striped balmorals into her pocket, she started slowly towards the mills again, dreading the interview in spite of herself, and passing and repassing the rickety old steps several times before she could make up her mind what to say first.

“Want to see how it’s growed?” and Tryphosa suddenly bounced out of the door, bringing up on the grass beside her flower-bed. “It’s just jolly! but I don’t believe yer care any great shakes about my going to that there place.”

“Oh! but I do, really; we want you to come very much, Miss Cox and all; and we have such nice times, and we sing,” said Sarah, stepping inside the gate.

“Well, fetch on yer clothes an’ I’ll see.”

“Oh! but couldn’t you come to my house Sunday morning? Miss Cox thought—”

“Oh, ho! ye ain’t going to give me the duds, only fix a fellow up for the show. Much obleeged, but that don’t go down, not by a jugful!”

“No, oh! no,” began Say earnestly; “but wouldn’t you rather come to my house and let me braid your hair just like mine, you know, and have mother fix in a ruffle and—and a ribbon?”

Something kept suggesting just the right thing to our Say.

“And see here,” she added, pulling out the balmorals, striped brown and gray with just a thread of scarlet, “I’ve brought these because I thought you’d like to be sure. They’re for your very own, and I’ll bring the shoes to-morrow.”

The dull eyes fairly glistened and the rough, tanned cheeks dimpled under the frowning eye-brows. “Well, hand ’em over. I’ll be there. No, come to think, I was going after blackberries Sunday. You’ll have to wait a week, unless,” and the eyes snapped maliciously, “you could come to the factory and help awhile Saturday afternoon, so’s I could get out earlier.”

The dirty old factory! But Say hesitated only a moment. “Yes, I’ll do that if you’ll promise sure.”

“Sure it is!” and Tryphosa held out a dirty brown hand; “but you don’t mean it; you’re only foolin’.”

Say’s mother might have to sew very hard for a living, but it was very different from taking in washing and having a drunken husband to worse than waste the greater part of his own and the others’ earnings. Say was very different from the factory girls. Phosy could see that.

“But I do mean it,” said Say, shaking the soiled hand so heartily Tryphosa actually grinned with delight.

There was a whole suit ready Saturday night. Miss Cox attended to that, and Say was on hand in the afternoon. The girls said it was a shame and pitied her dreadfully, but never once thought of offering to go with her to the “horrid old mill.” And oh, how hateful Tryphosa was! She introduced Say to the mill-girls as “Sister Sainty,” kept them in a roar over her probable exploits in the Sabbath-School line, and held Say in suspense with a dread of impossible accidents.

But she made her appearance, bright and early, Sabbath morning, comparatively quite docile, submitted to be washed, shampooed, braided, and ruffled, with a most martyr-like air, and came out from the process not so very unlike the five other girls, among whom Say seated her, with such a happy look in her own blue eyes. Just to see her sitting there more than repaid the trouble.

“The faith that conquers,” said Miss Marvin, watching the two go away from Sabbath School together, “is the faith that goes right to work, and keeps at it.”

III.
PLAYING “INJUNS.”

“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

“We’re playing Injuns; that’s what ’tis,” said Tod, as his mother opened the shed door and stepped back, exclaiming, “Well, what now?”

Jackson, the gardener, had been painting brick-work, trellises, vases, etc., and put away his materials, red, white, and green paint, with the brushes, on the lower shelf of the tool-room, opening out of the shed. Tod and Maybee had discovered the treasures, and with the help of an old feather duster had transformed themselves into quite respectable savages.

“It’ll come off easy,” said Tod, pulling out the feathers and rubbing his hand over both cheeks, blending the different colors into one neutral tint, around which his yellow hair stood out like an aureola.

“Was there ever such children!” sighed Mamma Smith despairingly. “There’s no washing it off. Do come here, Dolly, and see what can be done.”

“Oh laws! jest let me have some sperits of turpentine,” said faithful Dolly, who had reigned in the Smith kitchen years before Tod was born. “I’ll go get some of Jackson, and do you childern jest run round to the kitchen. We’ll hev it fixed in no time.”

“I sha’n’t have any spurtuntine on my face,” said Maybee decidedly, as Dolly disappeared in search of Jackson. “What’s water for, I’d like to know, if ’tisn’t to wash in,—soap an’ water, that’s what my mamma uses. I don’t think Dolly knows.”

“My guesses her does,” returned Tod, looking ruefully at each little red and green finger, “but—it’s being scwubbed; my’d rather scwub his own self.”

“She won’t spurtuntine me,” repeated Maybee, slowly following Tod, who, to his honor be it told, never thought of going anywhere but straight to the kitchen. “What makes you let her?”

“’Cause my mamma say her must, an’ my doesn’t want to be a forever ’n ’never Injun, does my?”

“I’d just lieves,” rejoined Maybee sullenly. “We hadn’t played scalp ’em, nor had a pow-wow, nor nothing. It’s real mean they found us so quick.”

“Only—p’raps ’twould a dried on,” said Tod, looking doubtfully at Maybee’s tattooed cheeks and feeling of his own.

“Hurry along!” called Dolly, from the back door. “I can’t fool round all the morning; and besides, I was jest going to fry some crullers, an’ you know what kind of boys ’tis gets hot crullers to eat; ’tain’t red and black ones now.”

That helped Tod wonderfully. He marched in like a Trojan, and manfully stood all the rubbing and rinsing, with only a faint little squeal whenever nose or ears threatened to come quite off. Maybee curled up in a chair, her black eyes shining defiantly from out the red and green rings.

“’Twasn’t so very bad, was it, Bub?” said Dolly, with a final sweep of her softest towel, “and you’re as sweet and clean as a posy, letting alone the turpentine smell. Now, lemme give my crullers a stir, an’ we’ll look after you, Miss Maybee.”

“Guess I can look after my own self,” muttered Maybee, slipping over to the sink in Dolly’s absence, and seizing a cake of yellow soap. Two or three whisks of the soapy hands over her face, and the black eyes shone out from the mottled ground-work like stars in a cloudy sky.

“Oh, my gracious!” said Dolly, reappearing. “Now you’ve been and done it! Didn’t you know ev’ry such thing only makes it wuss an’ wuss? You couldn’t never git it off, yourself, try as long as you live. Come, I sha’n’t hurt skersely any.”

“Feels good now,” said Tod encouragingly.

“’Tain’t more’n half off, much,” rejoined Maybee, who, like all uncomfortable people wanted to make somebody else uncomfortable.

“Yes, ’tis,” affirmed Tod, feeling his face over.

“You don’t know; you haven’t looked in the glass,” pouted Maybee.

“Yes, my does, ’cause her said her’d get it off, an’ her never tells lies,” answered Tod triumphantly.

“To be sure,” said Dolly, giving Tod a hug. “Come, now, it’s just as easy.”

“I sha’n’t!” persisted Maybee, backing into the farthest corner. “I won’t be washed, so there!”

“Oh well, jest as you please,” said Dolly, gathering up her towels. “If you’d rather look like a wild Injun, I don’t know as anybody cares. Remember, it’s your own fault, that’s all.”

Now Dolly had forgotten and the children knew nothing about Tryphosa Harte, sitting just inside the dining-room door. Tryphosa had come for the clothes; her mother did Mrs. Smith’s washing, and she was waiting for the bundle to be made ready. She had never come for the clothes till since she began to go to Sabbath School. She liked, now, to meet the girls of her class on the street, to get a pleasant “Good morning” from Miss Cox or Miss Marvin, as she passed, and above all to have Say Ellis run out, as she was sure to do, and walk a little ways down the lane with her. By working extra at noon she could get the half hour for her errand, and it was a great help to her mother. Tryphosa never used to think of that, but she thought of a great many new things now-a-days. Yesterday Miss Marvin heard the Sabbath School class, and in her plain, simple way had told them how sin blackened and stained the heart, and how only the blood of Jesus could make it clean again; that nothing they could do for themselves would whiten it the least bit: they were simply to ask God, and he would make it “white as snow.” But people didn’t want to be clean, she said, or else they wanted to be cleansed their own way, although God’s way was so simple. It was so very strange everybody didn’t want God for their friend and heaven for their home.

Hearing or caring about God or heaven was all new to Phosy, but she thought she could love Miss Marvin’s God; she didn’t feel afraid, as she did when Miss Cox talked about him. She would like such a friend; she would much rather have her heart sweet and clean, like the clover-fields, than like the filthy, dirty streets down by the mills; but she couldn’t understand the “how”—the three steps Miss Marvin called it,—wanting, asking, believing. Listening to the talk out in the kitchen that morning, somehow it grew wonderfully plain. Wasn’t it something like? Maybee didn’t want to be clean, or rather she wanted to be washed her own way; and how foolish she was! Tod had trusted himself to Dolly, and his round rosy, happy face told he had not been deceived.

Up in the little attic chamber of the old house, in the few minutes saved from her scanty nooning, Phosy kneeled down, and with a whole heartful of longing, said, “Dear Father in heaven, wash me, for I want to be clean, an’ nobody else can make me.” Then she went away to the noisy factory, happier than she ever remembered of being before.

“What’s come over Phosy Harte?” said one and another of the girls as the days went by. “She don’t swear more’n half as much, and she goes purring round, spry and happy as a kitten.”

They didn’t know, they wouldn’t have understood if they had, the “new life” that had come to Phosy. They could only see what it was doing for hand and eye and tongue. She might not always be as happy. There were all those dreadful habits to be fought with and conquered; but a great God had promised to help her,—one whose word never fails, and who had laid up for her “white robes” and a “crown,”—for all those, indeed, who are “washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb,” not for sin-blackened souls who refuse to be made clean.

IV.
GREEDY BELL AND HONEST BENNIE.

“He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.”

“Narrow escape!” said one to another as the crowd separated.

A run-away horse had dashed against the phaeton containing Mrs. Forbush and her niece, upsetting it, and throwing both occupants out. Fortunately their own horse remained perfectly manageable, and a few slight bruises were all the injuries received. Miss Marvin was taken up insensible, but soon recovered.

“Nothing worse than a shock to the nervous system. She will be out in a day or two,” said good old Dr. Helps, who never frightened his patients to death for the sake of a marvellous cure.

The next morning Miss Marvin’s purse was discovered to be missing.

“It was in your chatelaine pocket and must have dropped out. Of course, with such a crowd you’ll never see it again; but then, it’s a mercy our necks weren’t broken,” said Mrs. Forbush, consolingly. “I’m going down street, now. Bell will wait on you. Don’t exert yourself at all, remember.”

Just after Mrs. Forbush had gone, there was a ring at the door. Bell peeped out of the window.

“It’s only a boy—a telegram, may be. I’ll run down myself,” she said.

She was back in a moment all out of breath.

“O Cousin Mate! it’s your purse. Bennie Cargill, he found it this morning right where you were upset. Don’t you know you asked Sunday who that boy was up in the gallery, and—”

“Stop a minute, Bell.” Miss Marvin opened her portemonnaie. “It’s all right; the boy hasn’t gone, has he? Run quick and give him this,” taking out a bill, “and ask him to come and see me some day, so I can thank him myself.”

Bell hurried down again, out of doors, into the street.

“Oh, no indeed!” said Bennie, coming back to meet her, and touching his cap politely. “I couldn’t; my mother wouldn’t like me to take anything for doing what I ought.”

“But my cousin sent it to you, and wants you to come and see her some day.”

“I should like to do that ever so much; but not this, please. It would look as if I did it for pay.”

“Well, what if you did?” said Bell, whose finer impulses, I am sorry to own, had been deadened by vanity and selfishness.

“I would rather do it because it’s right and honest,” said the boy simply, at the same time putting both hands behind him as if afraid the longing awakened by the new, crisp bank-note might prove too strong a temptation. “I think she will understand,” and he walked briskly away again.

“I think she’s made a mistake in the bill. Ten dollars,—what an idea! And to think he refused it,” soliloquized Bell, looking even more longingly than Bennie had done at the bank-note. “What a lot of things it would buy! If it was only mine,—and I don’t just see why I needn’t. She’s given it away; of course it can’t make any difference to her who has it now,” and upon that Bell tied the bill into one corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and stuffed the handkerchief into the deepest corner of her pocket.

“Had he gone far? Did you have to run? Why, how red your face is,” said Cousin Mate when Bell reappeared. “Sit down now and tell me all about Bennie. Was he glad of the money? Somehow I fancied from the boy’s face that——but of course all boys like money. Will he be likely to spend it all for nuts and candy? Because in that case I shall wish I had made the amount less.”

“I—don’t—think—he—will,” said Bell, busily straightening the bureau-cover. “He—he’s a very nice boy and a splendid scholar. Mr. Blackman wanted him to fit for college, but they’re real poor; they live up-stairs in Mr. Pratt’s house, and Mr. Bowers took him into his store. They say he makes him work real hard. His father’s gone to sea, or something. They aren’t exactly in our set; we never call,” concluded Bell in her grandest manner.

“And it isn’t likely he’ll ever call on me,” said Miss Marvin, smiling, “My imaginary hero proves to be a real flesh-and-blood boy, honest and industrious, and willing to be paid for both,—in money rather than in kindness and sympathy. And so endeth my adventure.”

Bell sincerely hoped so; but as it happened, the next fine day Dr. Helps called for Miss Marvin to ride with him. It also happened that one of the doctor’s patients detained him a long time, and that while Miss Marvin waited, leaning back in his comfortable buggy, Bennie and his mother passed slowly by, talking very earnestly, and never dreaming any ears save those belonging to the doctor’s old horse were within hearing.

“Now, mother, don’t you almost wish,” Bennie was saying, “that I had taken the ten dollars Miss Marvin offered me?”

“No, Bennie; to know my boy was both honest and honorable, doing right without hope of reward, gives me more pleasure than a dozen visits could.”

“But it would be such a nice rest for you, and we haven’t seen Aunt Em for so many years, and it is so pretty up in Derryford in the summer.”

“I know, Bennie, and the trip would do you a great deal of good, but we will try to be patient a little longer. God always gives the means when he sees the end to be best for us.”

That was all Miss Marvin heard.

“I am afraid the shock was more serious than we realized the other day,” remarked the doctor, as he unfastened his horse; “or have I tired you all out keeping you waiting in this hot sun?”

Miss Marvin tried to smile and assure him there was nothing the matter. She couldn’t tell him of the ache way down in her heart to think her little Bell had deceived her again.

And Bell’s mother! Oh, how shocked she was, and astonished and mortified! She couldn’t believe it; and when Bell herself confessed it, and produced the identical bill, it almost broke her heart. Her only daughter guilty of anything so mean and low and wicked!

Did she forget how, in all the years since God gave that daughter to her, she had never prayed beside her pillow, had never talked with her about the all-seeing Eye looking down into our very hearts? that instead she had taught her, by example as well as precept, to consider this world “all and in all”?

When the temptation came, strong and unexpected, what was there to keep the child from yielding? To get is the world’s maxim, to give is God’s. Poor little Bell had learned only the first; she grasped eagerly at what seemed good, and found only sorrow and shame.

“It is so pretty up in Derryford in the summer!” Miss Marvin knew that; she had spent three months there once upon a time, and now she took a fancy to try a few weeks at the old-fashioned farm-house again. But she wanted somebody for company, and a nice boy to drive her around the country. Why weren’t Bennie and his mother the very ones? Bennie was looking pale, and his mother too. Was it true Mrs. Cargill had a sister in that very place? Then her plan was certainly the right one. Miss Marvin certainly made it seem as if she was getting as well as receiving a favor.

“And now,” cried Bennie, when she had called the second time and concluded all the arrangements, “it has come, means and all. So much better than the ten dollars could be!”

V.
GOD’S SIDE THE STRONGEST.

“And he answered, Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”

Papa and Mamma Sherman, Uncle Thed and Aunt Sue were going to the beach for a day, and wouldn’t be home until very late. Tod was to stay with Maybee, and Sue had the privilege of asking anybody she pleased for company. Bell was sick, so she chose Jenny King and Say Ellis. Bridget attended to dinner and was then allowed the afternoon out. Getting tea was all the best of it to the children. They put every available piece of silver on the table, even to the coffee-urn; they didn’t feel obliged to eat bread-and-butter for manners, but began and ended with cake and crullers,—Dolly’s crullers, which she had sent over by Tod “with her compliments.” Tod said he guessed that meant the sugar outside, “’cause her didn’t always have it on,”—not a bad definition of compliments in general.

When supper was ready, Tod wanted to say grace as papa did.

“You don’t know how,” said Sue.

“Yes, my does”; and Tod, folding his hands, said very slowly and gravely,—

“O Lord, for pity’s sake. Amen.”

Nobody laughed, he looked so serious; only Sue began, “I told you——”

“Don’t,” whispered Say. “He meant it all right, and I guess God understood.”

While they were eating, a rough-looking man came up to the open door and asked for a drink of water. Tod jumped up at once and handed him his own little silver mug.

“What a nice boy!” said the tramp. “Wouldn’t he give a poor fellow a bit of cake, now?”

Maybee hastened to pass the cake-basket, with all the politeness imaginable.

“My papa’s gone to the beach,” said Tod, trying to be sociable.

“Be back pretty soon?” asked the man.

“Not ’fore ten or ’leven. It’s a great long wide; and Bwidget is goned, too.”

“Got any dog?” asked the tramp, emptying the cake-basket, much to Maybee’s discomfiture.

“No; my hasn’t got any dog, ’cept Buff, and her’s a cat. An’ we can’t say ‘Have some more,’ ’cause you’s eat it all up. Guess you forgot my cup; mos’ put it in your pocket, didn’t you? S’pose you must go now. Call again, thank you.”

“Wasn’t he horrid?” said Sue. “I don’t believe you ought to have talked to him at all.”

“Guess my has to be polite; guess my mamma makes me politerest to poor folks,” said Tod.

“How he did look at things! S’pose he thought it was pretty nice,” said Maybee, tossing head very much like Bell Forbush.

“Well, he’s gone, and I’m thankful,” said Sue. “We won’t do the dishes because we might break something, and Bridget ought to be here pretty soon. I’ll lock up the silver in the side-board and keep the key till she comes. Don’t you think, the last time mother let her go, she stayed till the next day; but of course she won’t to-night.”

But ‘of course’ she did. Eight—nine—ten o’clock. The children shut the doors and lighted the lamps. Tod began to look sleepy and the older girls a little anxious. They tried to while away the time telling stories, and of course recalled all the horrible things they had ever heard. Each little heart gave a great thump when a loud rap sounded on the side door.

“It’s only me,” said a whining voice. “You’re such nice children, you’ll let a poor fellow in to stay all night, I know.”

“Why, it’s my man,” said Tod, wide awake. “Course, he’s got to stay somewheres nights.”

“But mother says, never open the door after dark, till we know who’s there. I’ll tell him what mother does,” and raising her voice, Sue called out, “You must go to Miss Pratt’s boarding house on Walnut Street. That’s where folks stay.”

“But we ain’t got any money. Just open the door an’ give us a few cents, can’t ye?”

“We mustn’t open the door,” gasped Jenny, “for don’t you know, when they get in they murder folks and everything.”

Tod gave a howl, and disappeared under the sofa.

“You sha’n’t come in—never!” screamed Maybee, stamping her foot.

“Open the door, or we’ll break it down,” was the gruff reply, whereat Maybee vanished under the table as rapidly as Tod had done.

The door began to be violently shaken. With a thoughtfulness quite beyond her years Sue put out the lights, and grasping the keys of the side-board tightly in one hand and Tod in the other, she led the way softly up stairs.

Looking out in the moonlight they could see three men go away from the door and begin to try the different windows.

“Oh! they’re so big, and there’s only us. They’ll come in and get everything, and kill us, just as sure. Oh! what shall we do? What shall we do?” and Sue, her courage suddenly giving way, dropped on the floor, sobbing and crying as if her heart would break.

“No, no! Don’t you remember,” said Say, her own lips ashy white, “the side God is on is the strongest, always. He can’t be with those bad, wicked men, and if he’s with us, we’re a great many the most.”

“I was real bad last week, but I’ve been forgived,” sobbed Maybee.

“My sweared a little swear yes’day, but my didn’t mean to; my said ‘Good Gwacious!’” moaned Tod.

“God doesn’t love us because we’re good,” said Say softly. “You know we’re all just as bad as can be.”

“I ain’t neither,” said Maybee stoutly. “I ain’t half so wicked as Tryphosa Harte.”

“Oh, but didn’t you know,” whispered Say, shivering as the back door rattled noisily, “Tryphosa is trying to be a Christian.”

“I guess I’m bad ’nough, and I’m real sorry,” said Maybee, quite subdued by another shake of the side door.

“Do you think God—is really close to, near enough to help us?” asked Sue earnestly. “You ask him, Say; you’re so much better than I.”

They kneeled down in a row beside the bed. Outside, three desperate men had succeeded in partly raising a window. A little more, and it would admit them. Miles away, papa and Uncle Thed were driving leisurely along, never dreaming Bridget had left their dear ones unprotected save by the Eye that never sleeps.

What was there to prevent a deed of blood, as dreadful as those we read of almost every day?

What but God’s angels, if so be they were around those helpless little ones, as they were around the prophet Elisha in olden time,—invisible but strong.

Farmer Trafton had that day been to Weltford market, ten miles away; had been belated in disposing of his load, and was slowly jogging home with his stout hired man beside him. The tramps, swearing at the unmanageable window, drew back in the shadow to wait till the team had passed. But just opposite the gate, one of the lynch-pins broke.

“Well now,” said Farmer Trafton, “here’s a pretty go—at this time of night; all honest folks abed and asleep. How’ll we fix it, Jake? Have to step in and borrow a bit of Sherman’s wood-pile, sha’n’t we? Hillo! here, what’s to pay?”

Three men were running swiftly away down the garden and through the orchard.

“God didn’t send his angels,” said Maybee, when at last she nestled safely in papa’s strong arms, “but that dear old Mr. Trafton was just as good, wasn’t he?”

“Betterer,” said Tod sleepily, “’cause we was ’quainted with him, an’ he told us such nice stowies, an’ a hymn; my’s going to learn it.”

VI.
STRONGER THAN PAPA.

“And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”

“Make me a butterfly, papa,” said little Bell,

“His wings all gold and scarlet, trimmed with diamond dust.”

“I could not if I tried; the how I cannot tell,”

Smiled papa. “But,” said little Bell, “Somebody must.”

“My little rose-tree has forgotten its spring dress.

It’s so queer how they change their winter cloak of snow!

Please fix mine over, green and pink, like all the rest.

You can’t? O papa! Why? Somebody does, you know.”

“My birdie died; they had it stuffed; you’d never know

But what it was alive. The trouble is,—ah me!

They quite forgot to put the music in, although

My papa says they can’t. But Somebody did, you see.”

Bell’s papa was so strong and wise she never dreamed

Of danger when he held her; even in the gale,

When the brave captain said, “We’re lost; there is no hope,”

And through the storm and darkness rose a fearful wail.

She nestled closer in his arms, “Mamma, don’t cry!

Papa can take us home all safe to Baby Will.”

“My darling, only One,” her father made reply,

“Can say to winds and storm-tossed ocean, ‘Peace! be still.’”

Safe in her own dear home she knelt, our happy Bell,

Saying, “I’m glad there’s Somebody up in heaven above,

Who’s stronger than papa.” Said mamma, “That is well,

But better still, my darling, to know his name is Love.

“He it is, who careth for the sparrows when they fall,

He, who clotheth field and forest, dell and leafy dome;

He who heareth little children, and, the best of all,

Safely leadeth those who love him to his heavenly home.”

VII.
REAL “MINDING.”

“But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart; for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin.”

Maybee stood by the window with a very sober face. There wasn’t much to see so early in the morning; only the street, a few passers-by, and over the hills, a spiral of white smoke where the cars were hurrying away towards the great city, carrying mamma and Sue with them. How long it would be till night! And mamma had said when she kissed her good-by, “I want Maybee to do exactly as Aunt Cynthia tells her, all the whole time. If she gets tired of play, there’s her garden to weed, the play-room to put in order, and that last seam to sew.”

Now, Aunt Cynthia didn’t like children; she didn’t “like anything much, except patch-work,” Maybee said, “an’ she must be made of patch-work, ’cause she always had stitches in her back when she was real cross.” Maybee would never sew patch-work for fear it would make scowls over her eyes, like Aunt Cynthia’s; so mamma had taught her to sew on soft, white under-garments for herself and her dollies. That “last seam” was in a night-dress for Lauretta Luella.

“I’ll sew it right straight up. That’ll please my mamma awfully,” thought Maybee.

“Ma-b-e-l!” called Aunt Cynthia from up-stairs. “Come here, this minute, and slick up your bureau-drawers.”

“I’m busy,” said Maybee, threading her needle.

“Never mind; come right along. What would your mother say to things being tumbled in this way?”

She would say “Put them in order,” Maybee knew. She had said “Mind Aunt Cynthia.” But Maybee felt more like sewing her seam, and mamma told her to do that, didn’t she? So the little girl sat still, and Miss Cynthia, after calling several times, arranged the drawers herself.

“I’ll sew it right straight up.” p 134]

“And now, Mabel,” she said, coming into the parlor with the inevitable big basket of patch-work, “you can sew very neatly, and I want you to help me a little while.”

“I can’t,” said Maybee shortly; “mamma wants me to do this.”

Aunt Cynthia could have told Maybee that her mother wanted that particular red-and-white bed-quilt a great deal the most; for the Ladies’ Sewing Society, of which Mrs. Sherman was president, were about sending a barrel to some poor, needy home missionaries, and she wanted the quilt to put in. But Aunt Cynthia only shut her thin lips tightly together, and sewed away as fast as she could. Maybee finished her seam, folded her work up neatly, and laid it where mamma would see it the first thing.

“Now I’ll weed my garden. Aunt Cynthia, will you please put on my thick boots?”

“You’re not going one step out of doors; so that matter’s settled,” said Aunt Cynthia.

Now, mamma would have explained that black, watery clouds had spread over the blue sky since sun-rise, and a thick, white fog crept up over the hills and meadows, making it very imprudent for a little girl, threatened with croup the night before, to go out, even with thick shoes on. Aunt Cynthia didn’t believe in telling children all the whys. She insisted on the good, old-fashioned obedience, that never asked questions; and I’m not sure but it is better than all questions and no obedience, which is so much the fashion now-a-days.

“She’s cross, and I’m going out anyway,” said Maybee, trying to forget what mamma said about minding. “That garden must be weeded, and if she won’t put my boots on I shall go without them.”

She worked busily till noon, the dampness steadily penetrating the thin slippers and light muslin dress.

“It’s a mercy if you haven’t killed yourself,” said her aunt, who, buried in her beloved patch-work, had actually forgotten the child. “Now I must make you a bowl of hot ginger tea,” she continued, forcing Maybee to lie down on the lounge, and covering her over with half a dozen blankets, “and you mustn’t stir one foot out of this room again to-day. Mind, now.”

But Maybee had set her heart on putting the play-room in order. Mamma never liked such a looking place right off the front hall; so when Aunt Cynthia started down street, after more calicoes, Maybee slipped up-stairs, all in a perspiration as she was, and arranged and re-arranged, swept and dusted the neglected room, sorted out Lauretta Luella’s scattered ward-robe, and washed her three china tea-sets, quite unmindful of the cool draught through the hall.

That night mamma found a tired, fretful, little girl, waiting by the window, with hot, feverish hands, aching head, and smarting throat.

“A very naughty girl!” Aunt Cynthia said severely, “who hadn’t minded in one single thing.”

“But, mamma, I tried to please you, I did really,” said the hoarse little voice. “I worked so hard! There’s the play-room and the garden—”

“Yes, dear, they both look very nicely. You deserve the ticket papa promised when the weeds were all gone, as well as the one you was to have when Luella’s dress was finished. But, Maybee, think a moment. Did you do it really to please me or to please yourself? Have you been mamma’s good, obedient little Maybee to-day?”

“It’s nicer doing things than ’tis minding,” said Maybee, hanging her head.

Sue looked up from the parcel she was untying: “There, mother, that’s just it. I’ve tried, you know, ever since that night we were so frightened, to do things to please God; but it’s—it’s the minding I don’t like.”

“The natural heart loves to do great things,” said Mrs. Sherman, drawing her eldest daughter closer to her; “it is only the ‘new heart’ that loves to mind God.”

VIII.
AND THE LAST, FIRST.

“The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is here.”

Miss Cox was out of town, and Miss Marvin had the Sabbath School class. The children liked Miss Cox, but thought nobody could equal Miss Marvin. “Miss Cox gave them good dinners enough,” Dick said, “but somehow, Miss Marvin made them taste better.” Dick was trying hard to make up for lost time, and to get the mastery over his mischievous propensities. He wasn’t trying in his own strength, either. That first time he asked for and found a Helping Hand wasn’t the last; and since Aunty McFane told Miss Marvin about Dick, that lady had taken especial pains to cultivate his acquaintance, chatting with him on all occasions, and sympathizing in his little trials and failures, till the two had become firm friends. That may have been one reason why Will Carter was a bit jealous of Dick; that, and the way he was rising in favor with Mr. Blackman.

The greatest change, however, was in Tryphosa Harte. You would scarcely have believed the quiet, happy face at the end of the seat was the same, Say had seen peering so disagreeably over the roof of the old house. The sour, ugly mouth was almost always smiling now; the fierce, scowling eyes were full of eager desire; the loud, coarse voice low and gentle, and her whole bearing so subdued and yet so thoroughly in earnest it was a comfort to look at her.

“Why, I really like Tryphosa,” said Jenny King, walking home one day beside Miss Marvin; “she is as different as can be. Don’t it seem queer, rather, she should become a Christian right away, and Sue Sherman and Nettie Rand and me, who’ve been talked to all our lives and know exactly what we ought to do, never get a bit nearer, as I see?”

“It’s the old story over and over, away back to the Jews and Ninevites,” said Miss Marvin, smiling rather sadly.

“The Jews and Ninevites?” repeated Jenny inquiringly.

“Yes; you remember, don’t you, that when God sent his servant Jonah to reprove the people of Nineveh they repented at once, and prayed to God for help; but when God sent his own Son to the Jews, his chosen people, who had been ‘talked to’ all their lives by his prophets and his providences, and who ‘knew exactly what they ought to do’ when the promised Messiah came, they refused to listen, they didn’t want to believe; and ‘publicans and harlots went into the kingdom’ before them.”

“But, Miss Marvin,” began Jenny hesitatingly, “don’t you think such folks—like Tryphosa, she was so dreadfully wicked—ought—I mean, need it more than—than—”

“Good people, like you and me, who never do anything selfish or unkind or hateful,” said Miss Marvin, smiling. “Perhaps; only the apostle Paul, one of the best men I ever heard of,—a brave, upright, moral man, before he became a Christian,—called himself the “chief of sinners”; and if—”

Turning a corner they came suddenly upon a group of boys,—Tom Lawrence, who had just been taunting Dick with some of his old scrapes, and Dick, who, in a blaze of passion, had been uttering oath after oath.

“There’s your model Sabbath-School scholar!” Will Carter had sneeringly said.

Miss Marvin appeared to have heard nothing of all this; she spoke to them all pleasantly. Dick slunk hurriedly away; Tom disappeared no less rapidly, followed by the others boys of his set; Say Ellis called to Jenny from across the street, and Will Carter was left to walk along with Miss Marvin.

Almost before he knew it, he was talking over all his many plans and hopes for the future. To fit thoroughly for college, to graduate “A No. 1,” work himself into an “up-stairs lawyer,” to make rousing speeches that would carry everything before them, possibly to step from the Legislature into Congress: that was Will’s ambition.

“And a worthy one,” said Miss Marvin encouragingly. “It will fill this life full of work and happiness. Now, what are you doing for the next, the life that is to last always?”

The boy drew himself up stiffly. “I do the best I know how, and that’s all anybody can,” he answered proudly. “I don’t pretend to great things and make a fizzle of it, as some boys do.”

“The best you know how,” repeated Miss Marvin. “Well, do you know as much as you ought?”

Will reddened. “I—I don’t quite understand.”

“I mean this, Will. Suppose God were to ask you to-day that same question—Do you know as much as you ought?—Couldn’t Dick Vance rise up in judgment against you,—you, a deacon’s son, whose father has prayed for you every night and morning since you saw the light, has shown you by example what a Christian’s joy and hope is, and urged you every day to make it your own? Dick, as you know, has never been in Sabbath School until very recently; had, before that, scarcely heard a word at home about another life; and yet, unless I am very much mistaken, Dick will go home to-night and repent bitterly of the sin into which he fell just now, while Will Carter, who flung his failure in his face, will rest satisfied he is doing the best he knows how.”

There was no reply, and Miss Marvin, stopping at Mrs. Forbush’s gate, said simply, “Please think it over, Will. I believe Dick is trying every day to learn of Him ‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ Be sure, Will, it is not true of you, as God said of the Laodiceans, ‘Thou knowest not thou art miserable and poor and blind,’ for not until you see your need of the wisdom from above will you seek help of One ‘mighty to save,’ and who will let no one who trusts him ‘make a fizzle of it.’”

IX.
PHOSY’S WORK.

“——and by it he being dead yet speaketh.”

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

One voice, then a dozen, the cry taken up and swelled into a deafening clamor by half a hundred boys just let loose from school; then the clang of bells, quick, imperative, not startling people from their midnight dreams, but checking them mid-way in the daily rush of toil and pleasure.

Uncle Thed, taking an early dinner to catch the train, left his fork sticking straight up in a mouthful of meat, and dashed away to his shop. Farmer Vance clapped his hat on his head, and then flew round and round the house to find it. Old Mrs. Pratt threw her silver spoons into the sink, and locked up her dish-pan in the china-closet.

Ding! ding! ding!

“It’s the factory,” cried somebody.

“The factory where Phosy Harte works,” echoed a group of girls huddled, with white faces, into Say Ellis’s yard.

“Lucky it’s just noon; all the hands will be out. The old thing will go like tinder,” said the crowd surging past.

But they were not all out. In the upper story Phosy was busily at work, making up the odd minutes taken for her walk. Half a dozen of the other girls had gathered round her, hats in hand, laughing, talking, not catching the faintest sound from below, not even noticing the smell of smoke which had emptied the other rooms in half the usual time. Nobody thought to warn them in the selfish scramble for safety. When at last they opened the door to go down, a dense, black column of smoke met them, and through it, enticed by the little draught from the door, came a sharp, pointed tongue of fire, up, up, wrapping the old stairway in a sheet of flame, and cutting off all chance of escape in that direction. They ran to the windows.

“Ladders!” shouted the crowd. But alas! not one was long enough to reach them.

“Splice it!” “Bring ropes!” “No, mattresses!” “Carpets!” “They must jump!”

Men jostled each other in mad haste for they knew not what.

“Jump! It’s your only chance!”

One after another the frightened girls flung themselves down, one to be caught safely in the strong arms of a stalwart fireman, another reaching the ground with simply a sprained ankle, still another with a broken arm; while a fourth, falling beyond the mattress, was taken up bruised and bleeding, but alive, and life is dear at any cost.

Only Phosy Harte and Judy Ryan were left,—Judy a poor, deformed girl, half crippled, who would not, dared not jump, and Phosy, waiting, coaxing, beseeching.

“It will be too late.”

There are soft mattresses and strong carpets below. Phosy begs, almost pushes the poor girl out, and she reaches the ground safely; but flame and smoke have driven Phosy back.

“The other window!” shouts the crowd, and half-blinded she springs over the low sill just as a fireman, who has succeeded in finding a long ladder, is raising it in place; she strikes it heavily, and drops limp and lifeless.

They lift her tenderly. One faint moan, a gasp,—that is all.

Back to the old house they carry her, past the little garden she had risen so early that very morning to weed, into the low room, with its close, sudsy, smoky atmosphere, which she will never brighten more.

“And nobody’ll never know the comfort an’ help she’s ben to me these last few months,” said the poor, over-worked mother, wringing her hands helplessly. “I ain’t been to none of yer meetin’s for years, but if it’s them what made her so handy an’ happy-like I’d be glad to try it meself. She’s asked me enough, the Lord knows, an’ I allers meant to go sometime, jest to please her. Oh! I’ll never forgit how she’s prayed nights with them childern—”

There four little voices took up the wail of grief, and more than one rough fireman drew his sleeve hurriedly across his eyes.

“She is through with all suffering,” said good old Dr. Helps, who had been working busily over the poor, crushed body.

“It’s a blessed thing for the child,” said Deacon Carter, as they walked away, “but it’s a strange Providence that took the one bit of leaven out of that miserable batch of humanity.”

Upon the pine coffin, the girls in Miss Cox’s class laid a wreath of beautiful hot-house flowers; but all over the lid, and inside, around the pale face and over the white robe, were fresh, fragrant pond-lilies, their subtile perfume filling the room. No one knew who scattered them there, only as Miss Marvin laid one tenderly between the waxen fingers, Bill Finnegan said huskily, “Thank’ee, ma’am; she liked ’em best of anything.”

The next Sabbath and the next, in the empty seat where Phosy had always sat, lay a bunch of the same pure, lovely lilies. Nobody knew how they came there, but their sweet breath seemed like pleasant memories of her who had gone. The fourth Sabbath an awkward, ungainly figure, in coarse homespun, shuffled down the aisle and stopped beside the row of neatly-dressed boys. Dick moved a little nearer to Varley, and motioned the new-comer to sit down.

“I—it’s Bill Finnegan, ma’am, an’ he’ll not be gettin’ in the way,” he stammered, as Miss Marvin left her seat to speak with him. “You see, she was allus askin’ me to come, but I didn’t think so much about it, then. I’d like, bein’ as this was her class, if you don’t mind. I’ll do the best I can; she was forever talkin’ about the things she heard tell of here, an’ ef I could learn, I’m thinkin’ it won’t harm a feller.”

Up-stairs, in the pew nearest the door, sat Mrs. Harte in the faded black bonnet which had done her service when her husband’s mother died years before, when “Daniel” was sober and industrious,—sat, with the tears running down her cheeks, getting, as she phrased it, “a fill of the good things Phosy talked so much about, to stand her through the long, lonesome week.”

And not many days afterwards there came to Dr. Helps’ door—for the doctor’s genial, sympathizing heart was known far and wide—a great, rough man, with blood-shotten eyes and haggard face.

“I want to sign the pledge, if so be you think it’s any use,” he said. “I’m only old Dan Harte, that ev’rybody gin up long ago, except her,—Tryphosy. She kep’ talkin’ an’ talkin’ in sech a lovin’ way, an’ only the Sunday afore, when she went away to meetin’ she kissed me. I was sober for a wonder, an’ sez she, ‘Father, if the Bible is true, what will you do when you come to die?’ I can’t git them words out of my ears, an’ you see I know there must be a something, to so kind of change Tryphosy from the fiery, hifalutin thing she was, to the purty-spoken, quiet, happy little cretur she got to be. And I thought mabbee, seein’ I’d quit drinkin’ ag’in an’ ag’in, an’ couldn’t never hold out, if there was anything in this ere religion Phosy got hold of, to help a feller, it’s Dan Harte what wants it.”

Good old Dr. Helps! not content to send away this weak fellow-mortal with a chapter of good advice, and some harmless tonic from his medicine-case, but who could and did kneel down beside him then and there, with a faith strong enough to hold up even this wreck of humanity for the Divine healing. Surely of him shall it be true, “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.”

And down in a dirty alley-way, between two tenement houses, Judy Ryan was teaching half a dozen ragged urchins a hymn Phosy used always to be singing about the mill. She had caught it at the prayer-meeting; and somehow plain, homely Boylston had suited her even better than the livelier Sabbath-School melodies. In her quaint fashion she had explained the words to Judy, and now, through her, was she not yet speaking to the poor, neglected souls in Pinch Alley? Wasn’t the “little leaven” working still?

X.
PHOSY’S HYMN.

“If thou seek Him, He will be found of thee; but if thou forsake Him, He will cast thee off forever.”

“My son, know thou the Lord,

Thy father’s God obey;

Seek his protecting care by night,

His guardian hand by day.

Call while he may be found,

Seek him while he is near;

Serve him with all thy heart and mind,

And worship him with fear.

If thou wilt seek his face,

His ear will hear thy cry;

Then shalt thou find his mercy sure,

His grace forever nigh.

But if thou leave thy God,

Nor choose the path to heaven,

Then shalt thou perish in thy sins,

And never be forgiven.”

XI.
MAYBEE’S REBELLION.

“O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.”

Maybee waked up out of sorts. Nothing went right. Her berries were sour, her fritters “wrinkly,” her egg-toast “smushy.”

After breakfast she went out to play, and in half an hour had contrived to break one of Sue’s croquet-mallets, lose Tod’s ball, left by mistake in her pocket, and upset the board on which Bridget was drying sweet corn. She came in, hot and tired, and crosser than ever.

“Untie my bonnet, quick!” was the first thing mamma heard.

“How do little girls ask?” she inquired.

“I don’t care! I want it off, quick; it’s hot, and Bridget tied it so hard I’m most choked.”

“Well, say ‘Please,’ and mamma will try to make her little girl more comfortable.”

“Oh dear! I always have to do something horrid. I’ll untie it my own self,” whined Maybee, tugging at the strings of her big shaker till she had drawn them into the tightest of hard knots; then she picked and twisted and pulled, but the depraved sun-bonnet only screwed around against her nose, or tilted up till it really threatened to strangle her. So at last she sat still on the hassock, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, tears and perspiration making grimy furrows over her cheeks, the poor shaker bent into a triangle, from the apex of which looked out two defiant black eyes.

“When Maybee says ‘Please,’ mamma will help her.”

But Maybee wouldn’t say Please, and the little bent shaker wandered off to the play-room. She was never tired of “keeping house”; but—in a sun-bonnet! Oh dear! She tried to “make believe” it was a cap like old Mrs. Pratt’s, but all the same, it would be dreadfully in the way. When she wanted to look for anything, she must turn way around; she couldn’t “cuddle up” Loretta Luella the least bit; she couldn’t play go to parties, and as for going to bed, there would be nothing to do but lie flat on her back and stare at the ceiling.

She ran hopefully down stairs when the dinner-bell rang, sure that mamma would relent; for how could she ever manage to find her wee mouth inside that big bonnet?

“Say ‘Please,’” said mamma.

Maybee shook her head and clambered sulkily into her high chair.

“What’s this,—a small butcher wagon? Bless me! if there isn’t somebody inside!” said papa taking the shaker between his two hands and tipping it back till he could see the grimy little face. “Isn’t it time the colt had its blinders off, mamma?”

“When she will say ‘Please,’” said mamma pleasantly.

“Oh! that’s the way the wind blows,” and papa, after asking a blessing, began carving the nice roast.

Jenny King had come home with Sue, and try as hard as they could, the triangular sun-bonnet, bobbing this way and that, was too much for their gravity. They all laughed at last, which sent Maybee off in high dudgeon, although she had scarcely eaten a mouthful. There was to be chocolate blanc-mange for dessert: she really must have some of that, and slipping into the kitchen she began coaxing Bridget to untie the knot.

“Shure, an’ it’s beyant me,” said Bridget, after two or three ineffectual efforts. “It’s too big an’ clumsy me fingers are intirely.”

So Maybee stole back into the parlor, curled up on the sofa, and listened to the cheerful rattle of dishes and hum of voices, growing, oh! so dreadfully hungry.

By and by she saw Jenny and Sue go off with their baskets. After berries, to be sure, and she might have gone with them.

A little later mamma came in with her sewing.

“Won’t Maybee say ‘Please’ now, and have on a clean dress?”

But Maybee only sat still, and looked straight out of the window.

It was trying when callers were announced that the poor little shaker must trudge disconsolately up-stairs again. But it would be tea-time pretty soon. Wouldn’t mamma let her dear little girl have any supper? Why, she would certainly starve to death before morning. Didn’t it make folks sick to starve to death? and wouldn’t they have to have the doctor? Then how would mamma feel? If she should die—but no; Maybee would rather not think about that, herself. None but good people went to heaven, and good people said “Please,” she supposed. She didn’t want to. She hated “Please.” And—why hadn’t she thought before? she could just go and get the scissors, and cut that knot right straight off. Mamma’s work-basket was in the sewing-room. Armed with the big shears, one little fat hand grasping each handle, she climbed up to the bureau-glass, carefully put them astride the troublesome knot, and gave a quick snip.

Something sharp went into her chin, something warm trickled down her neck. Had she cut her throat? That always “bleeded folks to death.” She gasped a little, sat down on the floor, and began mopping up the stream of warm blood with a pillow-sham. She felt weak and tired, but she couldn’t lie down, for there was the knot tight as ever.

“Sue! Sue!” she called faintly, as somebody ran past the door.

“I can’t stop; Jennie and I are going home with Bell,” answered Sue, half way down the stairs.

But somebody must help her.

“Bridget, O Bridget! do come up here a minute,” she called softly down the back stairs.

“An’ shure, it’s not I that’ll be laving me work to look after the likes of ye,” muttered Bridget, heated and tired with her ironing.

What should she do? She crept slowly down the stairs and through the back entry, the big pillow-sham stuffed into the front of the shaker, and quite concealing the tall clothes-bars of freshly-ironed linen Bridget had just set out to air. Over they came, completely covering her.

“Mamma! mamma! O my mamma!” she screamed. “Oh-h! please, my dear mamma! please! PLEASE! ’fore I’m deaded over an’ over.”

That call wasn’t in vain. Strong arms picked her tenderly up; soft, skilful fingers untied the hateful knot, and bathed the poor, aching face; loving lips kissed away the tears.

“Oh, but it’s been such a horrid day!” whispered Maybee to papa, when supper had been eaten and it was time to say good-night.

“Dear me! How did it happen?” said papa.

“I happened it myself,” returned Maybee soberly. “Folks most always do, don’t they?”

“Exactly,” said papa. “The trouble that comes of sin we mostly put ourselves into.”

“An’ what does peoples do who haven’t any mammas to pull ’em out?” inquired Maybee anxiously.

“Whom did Maybee grieve besides mother, to-day?”

“God,” she answered solemnly.

“And only God can help us out of sin. Even mamma cannot keep Maybee from being just so naughty again, but God can. Remember that, little one, and ask him to-night to make you always his own good little girl.”

XII.
“BECAUSE.”

“Because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded.”

“What is the matter?” inquired Maybee, coming suddenly upon Tod, sitting on the door-step, with one fist screwed into either eye, and big, round tears dropping off the end of his nose.

“My new knife, it’s all losed!” and Tod buried half his face in a small square of Centennial cotton.

“Oh me suz! an’ I’ve lost your ball,” returned Maybee consolingly. “There’s never a shower ’thout it rains, my papa says,” which misquoted proverb Tod proceeded to illustrate with a fresh burst of grief.

“You see,” continued Maybee, “Sue said I mustn’t fire it that way, because it would go in the tall grass. I shouldn’t never thought of it if she hadn’t, and now papa won’t let me go and get it.”

“My hasn’t got anyfing,” wailed Tod, behind his handkerchief.

“It’ll be in the hay if the cows don’t eat it,” said Maybee cheerily. “Where’d you lose your knife?”

“Over in the marsh; it sinked, you know.”

“How came you playing down there?”

“Wented myself.”

“Who said you might?”

“Nobody,” very faintly.

“Oh!” said Maybee significantly, “naughty boys always lose their knives or something; but never mind, let’s go an’ see Aunty McFane and little Peter.”

“Can’t,” said Tod dejectedly.

“Why not?”

“Can’t go frough the gate for one, two, three days; mamma said so.”

“What for?”

“’Cause—’cause—my runned away.”

“Well,” with a long-drawn breath, “let’s go on the front pizarro and play steam-boat; only—you’d better have a clean apron on. Such awful patched pants, an’ that jacket! Why, you’re ever so much the biggest!”

“Can’t help it,” said Tod sulkily. “Can’t have no other clothes on for the greatest long while.”

“Well, if I sha’n’t give it up! What for?”

“’Cause—’cause I played with the grindstone in my best jacket.”

“The-od-o-re Smith! Aunty’s told you over and over again she’d punish you if you did.”

“My knows it,” said Tod meekly: “an’ my mamma’s so pur-sistent; might have finked she would.”

“Of course. What a goose! Well, then, let’s go in the shed and play store.”

“Isn’t any fings there. Mamma’s locked ’em all up, ’cause my kep’ forgetting—no, cause my didn’t want to put ’em away when she said it was time”; and Tod stared straight up at the blue sky overhead.

“I hate ‘becauses,’” said Maybee emphatically,—“that kind, anyhow. I just had miserable times, my own self, all yesterday.”

“’Cause why?” asked Tod, with alacrity.

“Because my strings all knotted up tight—no; ’twasn’t, neither; I just wouldn’t say ‘Please,’ and the ‘becauses’ kept happening right along,—horrid, all of ’em. There’s always one with things you ought to do and don’t want to, and things you want awfully to do and mustn’t. They’re tied right tight on, too. And then there’s a nice kind, when you get a ticket because you’ve sewed your seam, or something. I wish they’d made ’em all like that.”

“Are you sure which is the best kind?” asked aunty, coming out on the stoop, and sitting down between them. “What did papa snip the baby’s hands for, this morning, Tod?”

“Oh! ’cause her will put her fingers in the sugar-blowl,” returned Tod contemptuously.

“Was that a good or bad ‘because’?”

“Why, my s’poses her don’t like to be snipped; but you know if we ’lowed her to touch fings, her might burn her on the teapot, an’ spill the gwavy, an’ every-fing; ’sides it isn’t polite, an’ we must learn her to behave,” concluded Tod, with an air of superior wisdom.

“That is just it,” said mamma, drawing the little reasoner into her lap. “We all need to learn a great many things that we should not if there were no ‘becauses.’ God lets the bad ‘becauses’ happen, as Maybee says, to teach us how to be better, or to keep us from something that would harm us. Let me tell you a little story all in rhyme, and then we’ll see if we can’t happen the ‘good becauses,’ by doing just what God wants us to.”

XIII.
WHY FRED WAS PUNISHED.

“The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked.”

Our Fred, the merriest boy ever seen,

Was now in disgrace. We were all so sad.

But saddest of all was his mother, I ween,

The dearest mamma a boy ever had.

She had argued, entreated, commanded in vain.

Poor, foolish Fred still refused to obey.

Poor, foolish Fred! who would sadly complain

To do without mamma one single whole day.

So strong and so loving, so wise and so good,

So ready to help, so patient to bear,—

Could any one do what his dear mamma could?

Or take of her boy such fond watch and care?

She waited and waited, but Fred only grew

More sullen and stubborn; then, with a tear,

She said, oh! so slowly, “It never will do

To leave him unpunished, tho’ never so dear.”

The verdict was given,—at home to remain

That day of all days, the Fourth of July.

And mother, whose lips framed the sentence so stern,

Grieved more than we all, her boy to deny.

Patient to wait, strong and loving to help,

But firm against wrong,—he’ll thank her, someday,—

The mother, who, seeing the gain through the pain,

With punishment barred Sin’s broad, tempting way.

And so our Father in Heaven doth wait,

Lovingly, patiently; once and again

Calling us back from the broad, gilded gate

Which leads down to death, through sorrow and shame.

His love, strong and tender to help and to bless,

Though stern and unyielding, is love no less

When it bars the way with punishment sore,

Than when it waits at the Open Door.

PART THIRD.

I.
FARMER VANCE.

“Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.”

Farmer Vance and his wife were taking tea at Mr. Sherman’s. Mrs. Vance and Mrs. Sherman were old schoolmates, and always exchanged yearly visits.

The two gentlemen had talked over the coming election, specie payment, business prospects, and came finally to the Centennial.

Did Mr. Vance think of going? Well, he didn’t know; should like to well enough. Fact was, he’d been unfortunate about his help all summer,—had them off and on; couldn’t think of going unless he found some reliable man to look after things. By the way, did Mr. Sherman know of anybody who wanted to hire out for the rest of the season?

Yes; Mr. Sherman was sure he knew of just the man, or at least a man who needed just such a place. He had been employing him for a few weeks, and could vouch for his willingness and ability. It was Dan Harte, living in that little old house on the corner—

“Dan Harte!” echoed Mr. Vance, laying down his knife and fork.

“Yes, Dan Harte,” repeated Mr. Sherman, reaching for another biscuit; “and a better gardener I wouldn’t ask for.”

“How many sprees has he had in the time?”

“Not one.”

“You’re joking now. Why, I know Dan. He worked for me, years ago. As you say, he was willing and competent, but he would have his times. He was soaked through and through with whiskey then, and he has been going down hill ever since.”

“But you see, he has turned square around and is going up now.”

“Oh, sho! he’s done that time and again. You remember the temperance flurry we had three years ago? I helped the thing along then, mostly on account of such fellows as Dan. Don’t believe in so much fuss myself, although I don’t make a practice of using the stuff. But, as I was saying, Dan signed the pledge. Wasn’t the least bit of use; he was dead drunk in less than a week. I wouldn’t give that,”—snapping his fingers,—“for all his promises and pledges.”

“I confess I should have little faith myself were it not that now he has an Endorser whose word never fails,” rejoined Mr. Sherman, quietly.

Mr. Vance looked his surprise, and politely waited for his host to proceed.

“I do not say he will not fall again,” resumed Mr. Sherman, “but I do say that so long as he keeps his trust where it is now, on the Divine arm, he will stand firm. Dr. Helps called my attention to his case first. He said he believed the man had become a Christian, and he was anxious to get him employment out of doors, away from those low groggeries around the mills. I could quite easily create a supply for the evident demand, and am not sorry I did. One can’t do a better thing than to extend a helping hand to a fallen brother.”

“Oh, of course, of course; but my word for it, he’ll give in to his appetite again, sooner or later. It’s in the nature of things. I haven’t your faith in this church business. Haven’t been inside one myself for twenty years, to say the least; never brought up my boy to, either. Folks all prophesied he’d go to destruction, but I ain’t ashamed to stand him alongside of Carter’s boy, to-day.”

Mr. Sherman lifted his eyebrows slightly.

What but the very church influences the father despised had checked the boy in his downward career and led him up to better things?

“Dick is very steady at church,” he remarked.

“Yes, oh, yes! he and his mother have taken to it of late. I let them have their own way; that’s my creed—every man as he thinks—liberal, you see. Freedom is what our forefathers came over here for.”

“Freedom to worship God,” amended Mr. Sherman, quietly. “I believe in that liberality. If a man will truly worship God after the dictates of an enlightened conscience, I won’t quarrel about his creed. But I want him to let the true light shine on his conscience, not merely the flickering flame of reason or science.”

“Can’t all see alike; don’t believe in any of it myself,” rejoined Mr. Vance, pushing back from the table. “Come, let’s have a look at Dan. If I thought it would last long enough to pay, I’d really like to hire the fellow.”

Some six weeks later Mr. Sherman met the farmer on the street, and stopped to inquire after his new workman.

“It beats all!” said Mr. Vance. “The man’s in earnest this time, and no mistake. Does seem as if he’d hit the right tack at last, and I can’t help believing he’s going to hold out, in spite of myself. Anyhow, wife and I are going to start for the Centennial next week, leaving Dan monarch of all he surveys. Now, I’d like to ask if you really pretend it’s his religion makes all the difference? for he is different from what he’s ever been before; there’s no denying that.”

“I do most sincerely believe it is wholly by faith in a helping Saviour that man is to-day clothed and in his right mind,” rejoined Mr. Sherman, earnestly.

“Well, I never saw anything just like it,” said Mr. Vance, preparing to move on. “It astonishes me every time I look at him. I may come to church myself some day just to inquire into the thing. Be some staring, wouldn’t there? Plenty of room I suppose?”

“Room and a welcome and a blessing, I trust, for ‘whosoever will,’” said Mr. Sherman shaking his friend’s hand heartily. “Come, and get on the ‘right tack,’ yourself.”

“Well, look out for me next Sunday, then. I’ve more than half made up my mind there’s something in it, after all. Nobody can deny it has worked a wonderful change in Dan Harte,” and Mr. Vance walked hastily away.

II.
TELLING THE TIDINGS.

“And we declare unto you glad tidings.”

There was to be a Sabbath School concert, quite an elaborate one, and both girls and boys were interested to make it a success.

“What do you mean by ‘success’?” asked Miss Marvin of her class who were eagerly discussing the parts assigned them.

“Oh! get lots of people here and have ’em say it’s grand—tip-top,” said Varney Lowe.

“To go ahead of all the other churches,” said Bell Forbush.

“Not to have one single failure,” added Nettie Rand.

Miss Marvin shook her head smilingly.

“Real success means more than that,” she said. “You are going to tell once more the ‘old, old story.’ There will be people here not so familiar with it as you and I may be. Which will you aim to have them remember,—the manner or the matter?”

The girls looked doubtfully at each other, but the closing exercises prevented further remark. The class, however, remained after school to decide when and where to meet for rehearsals.

“You must all come to my home every other night,” said Bell decidedly.

“I’m afraid—perhaps—I thought Miss Marvin didn’t approve,” suggested Sue.

“Indeed I do; you cannot take too much pains to speak clearly and correctly. Shall I explain what I did mean? Suppose you make a feast for your friends, and they pronounce it the best they ever ate. At the same time, you find a poor man starving close by your door. You may give him never so little, but you feed him tenderly, and save his life. Which will give you the most satisfaction,—the thought of that, or the praises of your friends?”

“That, of course,” said Varney Lowe. “It’s so splendid to save anybody’s life. Heroes always do.”

“Well, you are preparing for your friends a feast of good things from God’s storehouse of truth. You cannot serve it too royally or arrange it too attractively; but remember, there will be souls here, starving, absolutely dying,—although they may not believe it themselves,—for the bread of life. Would it not be the truest success to feed one such soul with the crumb you are each to bring?”

“Nobody ever notices what we say,” interrupted Bell, rather flippantly.

“There are two things I wish you would do this week,” continued Miss Marvin, without noticing the interruption; “one is, to invite your parents to come——”

“I most think father will, this time,” put in Dick, his face all aglow.

Mr. Vance had been to church for several Sabbaths.

“Of course we shall ask them, we always do,” said Nettie Rand.

“And will you also ask your Heavenly Father to be here and help you to speak the words so plainly and earnestly as to make them stepping-stones by which somebody shall get nearer to Himself,—somebody perhaps, who has not even started heavenward?”

Will Carter shrugged his shoulders, and turned away. There was only one faint “Yes’m.”

“Can you tell me,” said Miss Marvin pleasantly, “why this is more strange or difficult to do than the other? Remember, if we really want that best kind of success, and ask God for it, we shall surely have it.”

Maybee and her dearest girl-friend, Nanny Carter, stood close by waiting, as usual, for Sue. Nanny was busily talking:—

“You haven’t seen my new bronze boots, an’ there’s my beautiful brown an’ gold stockings; won’t they look el-egant up there on the platform? and aren’t you glad we’re all to dress in white? Shall you wear a brown sash? it’s so fashionable, and which do you think’ll look best for me, pink or red flowers?”

“I don’t know,” said Maybee absently. “But isn’t it queer—about the stepping-stones, and helping folks? Don’t you wish we could?”

“Could what?” asked Nanny, who hadn’t heard a single word.

“Why, our verses,—make ’em stones, you know, to help folks along. Just s’pose, now, everybody’s verse was a really, truly stone, how thick they’d be, and p’raps lots more folks would go to heaven. I mean to ask Him.”

“Ask—who—what? You’re dreadfully poky to-day. I shall go and walk with Will,” said Nanny; and for once Maybee did not coax her back, she was so busy thinking.

She kept thinking, too, all the week. Never did she learn a piece so thoroughly, or take more pains to recite it loud and distinctly.

“It can’t help anybody ’thout they can hear it, course,” she said when Sue praised her. “An’ please don’t put on my bib-collar with the crinkly lace be-cause I can’t help thinking ’bout it—it’s so lov-er-ly, you know; an’ I want to think ’bout the folks who don’t love God. I’ve asked Him to make my verses help ’em. Have you?”

“Oh, dear, no! I forget all about it only when Miss Marvin is talking,” said Sue sorrowfully.

“I s’pose that’s why there isn’t more stepping-stones to help folks up to heaven,—’cause other folks forget, don’t you? But you might ask Him now before we go, you know.”

So they knelt down together, and two earnest little prayers went up into God’s great, loving ear.

Even talkative Nanny felt the influence of Maybee’s quiet, happy face, as the classes took their respective seats, and listened attentively while the superintendent read a chapter and the pastor prayed.

Then the school sang the hymn beginning,—

“Our joyful notes we gladly raise,

To Him whose name we love.”

After which the superintendent announced the subject of the concert by reading the following anecdote.

III.
JESUS’ NAME.

“And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.”

“NONE OTHER NAME.

“FROM THE GERMAN, BY H. H. H.

“A blind man sat before the door of his hut and read in his Bible. He did not read with his eyes, but with his fingers. With his fingers? Exactly so. Blind people have an unusually keen sense of feeling, so that books have been printed for these unfortunate ones with letters which stand out from the page. In an incredibly short space of time they learn the different forms of the letters so thoroughly that as their fingers swiftly follow the lines, their mouths pronounce syllables, words, and sentences. Of course this requires much toil and much patience.

“My reader will now believe what I said, that the blind man who sat before his hut was reading his Bible. Many people, old and young, stood near and listened to him with amazement. A gentleman who was passing was attracted by curiosity and reached the place just as the blind man who was reading in Acts iv., had apparently lost his place. While he was searching the lines with his fingers he repeated several times the words, ‘None other name—none other name—none other name!’

“Several of the bystanders laughed at the bewilderment of the blind man, but the strange gentleman, sunk in deep thought, left the place at once. For several weeks the grace of God had been working in the mind of this man, and had awakened in him the consciousness that he was a sinner. In vain had he tried one way after another to bring peace and rest to his heart. All his religious work, his good resolutions, his altered life,—nothing had availed to free his conscience from so unendurable a burden and to make his heart truly happy.

“In this frame of mind he had drawn near to the blind man, and like the sound of solemn music these words had struck upon his ear, ‘None other name!’ And as he reached his home and sat down to rest, the words rang still in his soul like the sound of distant bells, ‘None other name—none other name!’ The longer he meditated upon these wonderful words, the brighter glimmered the light of grace in his heart, hitherto so unquiet, so that at last he cried out in wonder and delight, ‘Now I understand it, now I see it! I have sought my salvation in my own works, in my prayers, in my own improvement. Now I see my error clearly. Only Jesus can save and bless. Henceforth I will look to Him. Beside Him there is no way of life,’ ‘for there is none other name—none other name—none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved!’”

The moment the superintendent paused the school began singing,—

“There is no name so sweet on earth,

No name so sweet in heaven,—

The name, before his wondrous birth,

To Christ, the Saviour, given.

We love to sing around our King,

And hail him blessed Jesus;

For there’s no word ear ever heard,

So dear, so sweet as Jesus.”

And then Maybee, slowly, earnestly, and so clearly not a word was lost, repeated the first verse of the hymn,—

“I love to hear the story

Which angel voices tell,

How once the King of glory

Came down on earth to dwell.

I am both weak and sinful,

But this I surely know,—

The Lord came down to save me

Because He loved me so.”

Like a low, sweet echo, the whole class of little girls began singing,—

“Jesus loves me, this I know

For the Bible tells me so;

Little ones to him belong,

They are weak, but He is strong.”

Then Maybee went on,—

“I’m glad my blessed Saviour

Was once a child like me,

To show how pure and holy

His little ones might be;

And if I try to follow

His footsteps here below,

He never will forget me

Because He loved me so.”

And the class sang again,—

“Jesus loves me, He will stay

Close besides me all the way,

If I love Him, when I die

He will take me home on high.”

Maybee:—

“To sing His love and mercy

Our sweetest songs we’ll raise,

And though we cannot see Him

We know He hears our praise;

For He has kindly promised

That we shall surely go

To sing among His angels

Because He loves me so.”

Class, singing:—

“Jesus loves me, He who died

Heaven’s gate to open wide,

He will wash away our sin,

Let His little child come in.”

And as the last note died away, the choir took up the sweet refrain and softly chanted,

“Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.”

Mr. Vance, who had listened indifferently to the prayer and reading, leaned eagerly forward as Maybee’s clear, earnest tones fell on his ear; but when the class took their seats, and Dick looked around inquiringly, his father’s head was bowed on the front of the pew. Asleep, was he? Dick thought so, with a keen pang of disappointment.

Recitation followed recitation. At the last came Sue Sherman, trembling a little, for Sue was very timid, but with a strong hope in her heart that God would remember her prayer.

IV.
THE INVITATION.

[RECITED BY SUE SHERMAN.]

“But the Lord is the true God, he is the living God and an everlasting king.”

I have a Friend, a precious Friend, unchanging, wise, and true,

The chief among ten thousand. Oh, that you knew Him too!

When all the woes that wait on me relax each feeble limb,

I know who waits to welcome me. Have you a friend like Him?

He comforts me, He strengthens me. How can I then repine?

He loveth me. This faithful Friend in life and death is mine!

I have a Father, true and fond. He cares for all my needs;

His patience bore my faithless ways, my mad and foolish deeds.

To me He sends sweet messages, He waiteth but to bless.

Have you a father like to mine in such deep tenderness?

For me a kingdom doth He keep, for me a crown is won.

I was a rebel once: He calls the rebel child His son.

I have a proved, unerring Guide, whose love I often grieve;

He brings me golden promises my heart can scarce receive;

He leadeth me, and hope and cheer doth for my path provide

For dreary nights and days of drought. Have you so sure a guide?

Quench not the faintest whisper that the heavenly dove may bring:

He seeks with holy love to lure the wanderer ’neath His wing.

I have a home,—a home so bright its beauties none can know;

Its sapphire pavement and such palms none ever saw below;

Its golden streets resound with joy; its pearly gates with praise;

A temple standeth in the midst no human hands could raise;

And there unfailing fountains flow, and pleasures never end.

Who makes that home so glorious? It is my loving Friend.

My Friend, my Father, and my Guide, and this our radiant home

Are offered you. Turn not away! To-day I pray you “Come.”

My Father yearns to welcome you His heart, His house to share;

My Friend is yours, my home is yours, my Guide will lead you there.

Behold One altogether fair, the faithful and the true!

He pleadeth with you for your love; He gave His life for you.

Oh, leave the worthless things you seek! they perish in a day.

Serve now the true and living God, from idols turn away.

Watch for the Lord, who comes to reign; enter the open door;

Give Him thine heart, thy broken heart: thou’lt ask it back no more.

Trust Him for grace and strength and love, and all your troubles end.

Oh, come to Jesus! and behold in Him a loving Friend.

As the school began the closing hymn, Mr. Vance took his hat and slipped quietly out. All the evening Maybee’s words had been ringing in his ear,—

“The Lord came down to save me

Because He loved me so.”

And now, as he walked slowly down the street, he found himself repeating, “None other name, none other name.” Back and forth, past the farm-house gate, he paced; then striding hastily through the garden and orchard, he flung himself on the grass, under a clump of maples.

“My Friend, my Father, and my Guide, and this our radiant home

Are offered you. Turn not away! To-day I pray you ‘Come!’”

He would settle the matter now. Big drops of perspiration stood on his forehead. He heard the little gate shut. Dick had come home; he and his mother would be anxious; but still the man sat motionless. The proud heart was so unwilling to own he had been mistaken, that he needed a Guide, that the “living God” had any claim upon him.