GROWING UP
A Story of the Girlhood of
JUDITH MACKENZIE
By JENNIE M. DRINKWATER
“Each year grows more sacred
with wondering expectation.”
—Phillips Brooks.
A. L. BURT COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.

Copyright, 1894,
By A. I. Bradley & Co.

CONTENTS

[I. The Horn Book]
[II. Square Root and Other Things]
[III. Was this the End?]
[IV. Bensalem]
[V. Daily Bread and Daily Will]
[VI. The Best Thing in the World]
[VII. A Small Disciple]
[VIII. This Way or That Way?]
[IX. The Flowers That Came to the Well]
[X. The Last Apple]
[XI. How Jean Had an Outing]
[XII. A Secret Errand]
[XIII. The Two Blessed Things]
[XIV. An Afternoon with an Adventure in It]
[XV. “First at Antioch”]
[XVI. Aunt Affy’s Experience]
[XVII. The Story of a Key]
[XVIII. Judith’s Turning Point]
[XIX. A Morning with a Surprise in It]
[XX. Judith’s Afternoon]
[XXI. Marion’s Afternoon]
[XXII. Aunt Affy’s Evening]
[XXIII. Voices]
[XXIV. “I Always Thought You Cared”]
[XXV. Cousin Don]
[XXVI. Aunt Affy’s Faith and Judith’s Foreign Letter]
[XXVII. His Very Best]
[XXVIII. A New Anxiety]
[XXIX. Judith’s Future]
[XXX. A Talk and What Came of It]
[XXXI. About Women]
[XXXII. Aunt Affy’s Picture]
[XXXIII. Nettie’s Outing]
[XXXIV. “Sensations”]

GROWING UP

I. THE HORN BOOK.

“I remember the lessons of childhood, you see,

And the horn book I learned on my poor mother’s knee.

In truth, I suspect little else do we learn

From this great book of life, which so shrewdly we turn,

Saving how to apply, with a good or bad grace,

What we learned in the horn book of childhood.”

—Owen Meredith.

Judith’s mother sat in her invalid chair before the grate; she looked very pretty to Judith with her hair curling back from her face, and the color of her eyes and cheeks brought out by the becoming wrapper; the firelight shone upon the mother; the fading light in the west shone upon the girl in the bay-window, the yellow head, the blue shoulders bent over the letter she was writing.

“Judith, come and tell me pictures.”

About five o’clock in the afternoon, her mother’s weariest-time, Judith often told her mother pictures.

The picture-telling began when Judith was a little girl; one afternoon she said: “Mother, I’ll tell you a picture; shut your eyes.”

It was in this very room; her mother leaned back in her wheel-chair, lifted her feet to the fender, shut her eyes, and a small seven-year-old “told” her “picture.”

Telling pictures had been the amusement of the one, and the rest of the other, many, many weary times since.

As the child grew, her pictures grew.

“Yes, mother,” said the girl in the bay window, “I’ve just finished my letter; I’ve written Aunt Affy the longest letter and told her all you said.”

“Read it to me, please?”

Standing near the window to catch the light, Judith read aloud the letter.

At times it was quaint and unchildish; then, forgetting herself, Judith had run on with her ready pen, and, with pretty phrases, told Aunt Affy the exciting events in her own life, and the quiet story of her mother’s days.

“We are coming as soon as spring comes,” she ended, “mother is coming to get strong, and I am coming to help you and learn about your village. Beautiful Bensalem. Mother says I am learning the lessons taught out of school; but how I would like to go to school with Jean Draper in your big, queer school-room.” As she turned towards her mother, the firelight and the light in her face were all the lights in the room.

The home of these two people was in two rooms; one was the kitchen, the other was bed-room, school-room, parlor. It was a month since her mother had walked through the two rooms; several times a day Judith pushed the wheel-chair through the rooms. She called these times her mother’s excursions. Last winter her mother wiped dishes, sewed a little, and once she made cake; this winter she had done little besides teach Judith. The child was such an apt scholar that her mother said she needed no teacher—she always taught herself.

Judith loved housekeeping; she loved everything she had to do, she loved everything she was growing up to do; her mother she loved best of all.

She lived all day long in a very busy world; the pictures helped fill it.

“Now, mother, shut your eyes,” she began, gleefully.

“Now, mother, shut your eyes,” said Judith gleefully.

The eyes shut themselves, the restless hands held themselves still; there would not be many more weary days, but Judith did not know that.

Judith waited a moment until she could think.

“Mother, how do pictures come?”

“Bring me that paper Don brought last night; I saw something to show you, then forgot it.”

Her mother turned the leaves of the paper and indicated the paragraph with her finger. Judith read it aloud:—

“Some years ago I chanced to meet Sir Noël Paton on the shores of a beautiful Scottish loch, all alone, with an open Bible in his hand. He put his finger between his pages, as he rose to greet me, and still kept it there as we talked. Supposing he might be devoting a quiet hour to devotional reading in the secluded spot, I made no remark on the nature of his studies; but after a few minutes he observed, with a glance downwards, ‘You see, I am getting a new picture.’ He then proceeded to explain that it was his habit, before settling down to his winter’s work, to walk about in the neighborhood of his summer residence, wherever that might be, with his Bible in his hand, seeking for an inspiration. Sometimes the inspiration came almost immediately; at others, he was weeks before he could please himself. The following spring appeared ‘The Good Shepherd,’ one of the finest of his works.”

Her mother made no remark; she often waited for Judith’s thought.

“I think Aunt Affy sees things through the Bible, mother,” said Judith, speaking her first thought.

“I know she does.”

“I see a face,” began the picture-teller, dropping down on the rug, and resting her head against the padded arm of the chair.

“You love faces,” was the quick response.

“And voices, and hands, and hair. This face I see is a good face—but, then, I do not often see ugly faces—the eyes tell the truth, the lips tell the truth; perhaps it isn’t a handsome face; the forehead is low, rather square, the eye-brows dark and heavy; the eyes underneath are a kind of grayish blue, not blue blue, like mine, and they are looking at me very seriously; the nose is quite a large nose, and the mouth large, too, with such splendid teeth; the upper lip is smooth, and the cheeks and chin all shaven; the hair is blackest black; now the eyes smile, and it looks like another face; I do not know which face I like better. What is the name of my picture?”

“Strong and true.”

“That is a good name,” said the picture-teller, satisfied, “and who is it?”

“Our dear Cousin Don,” was the reply with loving intonation.

“You always guess.”

“Because your pictures are so true. I like to look at people and places through your eyes.”

Judith smiled, and looking a moment into the fire, began again: “A fence, an old fence, and a terrace, not green, but rather dried up, then a lawn, with a horse-chestnut, a big, big horse-chestnut tree on each side the brick path, and then up three steps to a long piazza: the house is painted white, with white shutters instead of blinds, and there are three dormer windows in the roof; these windows make the third story. I wish I could see inside, but I never did. Perhaps I shall some day. ‘Some day’ is my fairyland, and may you be there to see. That day Cousin Don came to take me walking he took me past the place; he said some day when you could spare me longer he would take me in, he wanted me to see the brown girl who lives there; but there she stood on the piazza, the door was open and she was going in; she was a brown girl, all in brown with a brown hat and brown feather; a brown face too—I love browns; she happened to turn and she tossed a laugh down to Cousin Don. It was a pretty laugh, with something in it I didn’t understand; it was a laugh—that—didn’t—tell—everything. I told Don so. He said: ‘Nonsense!’ I don’t know what he meant.”

“That was Marion Kenney, and the old house on Summer Avenue,” guessed Judith’s mother, who knew the story of the brown girl from Don’s enthusiastic recitals.

Her mother’s voice was more rested; Judith pondered again.

“That was a city picture; this is a country picture. It is the beautiful, beautiful country, even if the grass is dead, and the trees bare; it is the February country in New Jersey; there are clouds, and clouds, and clouds overhead; and a brook with the sun shining on it, and a bridge with a stone wall on each side, a little bit of a stone wall, and stone arches where the water flows through; perhaps it rushes because the snow is melting so fast; there’s a garden with no flowers in it yet, but there are flower stalks, and bushes, and bushes; and a path up to the kitchen door, for the garden is down in a hollow; the kitchen shines, it is so clean, and smells, oh, how it does smell of graham bread, and hot molasses cake, and cup custards, and apple pie—but we can’t smell in a picture,” she laughed.

“I can—in your pictures,” said her mother, echoing the laugh very softly.

“And the dearest old sitting-room—Aunt Rody will call it ‘the room’ as if it were the only room in the house; there’s a rag carpet on the floor—Aunt Rody dotes on rag carpets; so would I if it were not for the endless sewing of the rags—and there’s a chair with rockers, and on the top of the back of it a gilded house and trees almost rubbed off, and on the back a calico cushion tied on with red dress braid, and a calico cushion in the bottom, and the dearest old lady sits in it and sews, and talks, and reads the Bible and the magazines; there’s a chair without rockers for the old lady who never rocks or does easy pleasant things, and hates it when other people, especially little girls, do any easy pleasant thing; and there’s another chair, like an office chair, with a leather cushion for the dear old man with a rosy face like a rosy apple, and a bald head on the top, and long white whiskers that he keeps so nice they shine like silver, and make you never mind when he wants to kiss you; and there’s a high mantel with a whole world of curious things on it that came out of a hundred years ago, and a lounge with a shaggy dog on a cushion on one end of it—how Aunt Rody lets him is a wonder to me—and a round table with piles of the ‘New York Observer’ on it. And just now the sweetest lady in the world in her wine-colored wrapper is lying on the lounge and the little girl in blue is flying about helping Aunt Affy and Aunt Rody get supper—O, mother,” with a break in her voice, “how I ache to get you there and take care of you there; Cousin Don says it is the best place in the world for you and me,—we would grow fresh and green and send out oxygen like all the green things in Bensalem. I think I’d like to grow green and send out oxygen.”

“Judith, you and I are always in the best place—for us.”

“Then,” said Judith, laughing, “I’d like a place not quite so good for us—only just as good as Bensalem.”

“When I was a little girl, thirty years ago, the room was just the same, only Doodles was another Doodles, and Aunt Affy’s curls were not gray, and Uncle Cephas was not bald or white—his whiskers were red then, and he was there off and on—and the other aunties came and went—and Aunt Becky died—the friskiest Aunt Becky that ever lived. I want my little girl to grow up in the dear old house, with not a stain of the world upon her; I want to think of my little girl there with Uncle Cephas and Aunt Affy.”

Judith understood; her mother had told her she would be there without her mother; but that was to be years hence—sorrow was a long, long way off to-night to the girl who must hope or her heart would break; she brought her mother’s fingers to her lips and kissed them; she did not worry her mother now-a-days even by kissing her lips or hair.

Cousin Don said to her that afternoon he took her to walk that she must not hang over her mother, or kiss the life out of her, and above all, never cry or moan when she talked about leaving her “alone.” “Nothing makes her so strong as to see you brave,” he said, watching the effect of his caution upon her listening face.

She had tried to be brave ever since.

“You can make pictures and see me there, mother,” she said brightly, with a catch in her breath.

“I do—when I lie awake in the night, and give thanks.”

“Tell me over again about when you were a little girl, there,” she coaxed.

Over and over again she had listened to the ever-new story of her mother’s childhood and youth in Bensalem; Aunt Rody was the dragon, Aunt Affy the angel, Uncle Cephas a helper in every difficulty, and all the village a world where something strange and fascinating was always happening.

“It was a very happy home for me when my father died and my mother took me there; she died before I was twelve; and then twelve years I was Aunt Affy’s girl; then your father took me away,” her mother said with the memory of the years in her voice and eyes.

“I wonder if somebody will come and take me away, or whether I shall stay forever and ever like Aunt Affy and Aunt Rody,” Judith wondered in her expectant voice.

“If somebody comes—if our Father in Heaven sends somebody as good and gentle and wise as your own father, I shall be glad of it up in Heaven, I think. You do not remember your father; in his picture he is like Don—Don is your father’s brother’s son; your fathers were much alike. Your father was only a clerk, his salary was never large; Don’s father was a business man, he died rich and left his only son a fortune; but your father and I never longed for money—Don has always given me money as his father did; he said you and I had a right to it. It has never been hard to take money from Don—he will be always kind to you; he thinks he has a right to you; you are the only children of the two brothers; they were only two—they never had a sister. Now you know all about your ancestry on both sides, I think; your grandfather and grandmother Mackenzie were born in Scotland; they died before you were born. Aunt Affy will be always telling you about the ‘Sparrow girls.’ My mother was a Sparrow girl. Just a year ago we were in that dear old home.”

“I was twelve then—I had my birthday there; perhaps I shall have another birthday there in April. Aunt Affy wants us to come so much. I can take better care of you now because I am older and I must not have lessons to make you tired; we will have a long vacation; I will only write poems for you and you needn’t even take the trouble to make the measure right. Aunt Rody said I was a silly baby to be always hanging about you; but she will see how I have grown up. Don says I am a little woman. Now I’ll tell you a picture. Shut your eyes, again.”

The tear-blinded eyes were shut again; Judith had been looking into the fire as she talked; she was afraid to look up into her mother’s eyes. It was being brave to look into the fire.

“I see a room up-stairs, a room with a slanting roof and only one window; the window looks down into the garden; it has a green paper shade tied up with a cord; there is a strip of rag-carpet before the bed, that is all the carpet there is; and there’s a funny old wash-stand with a blue bowl sunk down into a hole on the top, and a towel on the rail of the wash-stand with a red border—in winter a pipe comes up in the stove-pipe hole from the big stove in the sitting-room, but there’s ice in the pitcher very often; there’s a bureau with a cracked looking-glass on the top, an old bureau, everything is old but the little girl kneeling on the rag-carpet rug beside the bed, with her head on the red and white quilt, saying her prayers. That little girl is you, mother, a sweet, obedient little girl, that hasn’t a will of her own, and tempers, and tantrums like me.”

“I like to think that sweet little girl is you.”

“Then it is me; I’ve grown sweet in a hurry,” Judith laughed, “and left all my tempers and tantrums far behind.”

“There’s another T to go with them—temptations—through which you grow strong.”

Not seeming to heed, but in reality holding her mother’s thought in her heart Judith ran merrily on: “And I see a church, with a little green in front, and posts to hitch the horses, the two church doors are wide open, for in the picture it is Sunday morning; Aunt Rody is in the head of a pew in the body of the church, and Aunt Affy sits next, and Uncle Cephas is next the door, and there’s a girl between Aunt Affy and Uncle Cephas, a girl fifteen years old and her hair is braided, not in long, babyish curls—”

“Oh, my little girl, wear your curls as long as you can, because mother loves them,” her mother urged, bending forward to touch the soft, bright hair.

“Then her hair is curled, and she is trying to be good and listen. Perhaps she likes sermons—she looks so; in the picture the sermon is like the Bible stories you tell me when we read together—I wish ministers told Bible stories. And there’s the sweetest singing; it is like Marion Kenney’s singing; she sings like a bird, Don says; there are girls and boys all over the church, for the minister in the picture knows how to tell Bible stories to boys and girls and make them as real as the people and things in Summer Avenue and Bensalem; just as naughty and just as good. Jean Draper is there—in the pew behind me. Why, mother,” bringing herself back to the present and turning to look into her mother’s face, “Jean Draper was never in the steam cars, or on a ferry-boat in all her life—she has never been in New York or any where, only to Dunellen, which they call ‘town,’ and she walks there, or rides with her father. She wants to go somewhere as much as I want to go to boarding-school. It’s the dream of her life, as boarding-school is my dream.”

“Aunt Affy and Cousin Don will decide about boarding-school. Cousin Don and I have talked about it, and I will tell Aunt Affy what I think about it,” her mother decided with an unusual touch of firmness.

“But I wouldn’t leave you, mother, for all the boarding-schools in the world.”

“And I wouldn’t let you for all the schools in the world.”

“Well, it’s only a dream, like Jean Draper’s outing. You like pictures better than dreams. I think Don’s friend, Roger Kenney, is the minister in the pulpit; Don said he had preached there almost all winter, coming home every Tuesday—Monday he visits the people. Don is sure Bensalem will give him a call. Uncle Cephas likes him so much, and Uncle Cephas is an elder. Now, here’s another picture: on the same side of the street as the church, with only the church-yard and the locust grove between, it is the dear, dainty Queen Anne parsonage—only two years old, and so new and pretty; Jean Draper went with me through it—there was nobody there then—and nobody has lived there all this year; there’s a furnace in the cellar like a city house, and a bay-window in the study, and a pretty hall with stained-glass windows, and a cunning kitchen, a cunning sitting-room, and sliding doors into the parlor, and a piazza in the front, and at the side—and out every window is the beautiful country. I hope I may go again. Mother, you like this picture?” she asked earnestly, “that house is another dream of mine. O, mother,” with a comical little cry, “I’m so full of dreams, I’m full to bursting.”

“I like that picture. I like to think of Don’s friend there living a strong life; he has no worldly ambition. Don says it has been wholly rooted out of him. He was very fine in college, working beyond his strength—eaten up with ambition. Then he had an experience; Don said the fountains of the great deep were broken up in him, and he came out of it another man—as humble and teachable as any child. Don is afraid he will go there and be satisfied to stay.”

“Now, here’s another face,” said Judith, with a new reverence for Don’s friend: “brown eyes, and a brown curly beard, and a brown head, with laughing eyes, unless he is talking about grave things—he doesn’t make you afraid to be good, but to love to. Still, I am so afraid he will talk to me some day and ask me questions; I don’t know how to answer questions. Now, you know, I mean Don’s friend, Mr. Kenney.”

“Your pictures are very cheery. I hope you may tell some to poor old Aunt Rody.”

“I shall never dare. She snaps at me. She shuts me up and makes me forget what I want to say. Her eyes go through me. I don’t love Aunt Rody; I don’t want to love Aunt Rody. She doesn’t like baby girls,” contended Judith, shaking her yellow head. “She doesn’t like me and Doodles. We are shaggy and a nuisance.”

“You will not always stay a baby girl.”

“No; I want to grow up faster; I wish I might braid my hair. I want to write books and paint real pictures on canvas to earn money to take you to Switzerland. I’m sure you would get well in Switzerland. I see the pictures I would paint, and I think the books; but I am so slow about it. Sweeping, and washing dishes, and doing errands, do not help at all,” she said with a laugh that had no discouragement in it.

“They all help. Every obedient thing helps. You must grow up to your book and your picture; living a sweet, joyous, truthful, obedient life is growing up to it. The best books and the best pictures are the expression of the truest and sweetest life; the strongest and wisest life; am I talking over your head, dear?”

“No,” laughed Judith, “down into my heart.”

“My little girl has been her mother’s companion all these years; I fear I sometimes forget that you are only a little girl. But if you have grown old, you will grow young. I wish I could find a girl friend for you. But God knows all the girls in the world, and he will find one for you. If my daughter remembers all her life but one truth her mother ever said to her, I hope it may be this: The true life is the life hid with Christ; no other life is life, it is playing at life; this life is safe, still, hidden away, growing stronger every day; the expression of it, the making it speak he will take care of every hour of the day. You cannot understand this now—my words tell you so little, but they will come back to you.”

“I will write it down,” promised Judith, who loved to write things down, “and date it February fifteenth. Told in the Firelight. I know what it means better than I can say it. I often know what things mean, but I cannot say it.”

“Any more pictures?” suggested her mother, in a voice as bright as Judith’s own.

“An old face with pink cheeks and a long gray curl behind each ear, the softest step and the kindest voice—but I always forget and put sounds in my pictures. Those sounds are always in my picture of Aunt Affy.”

“You have not made a picture of Aunt Rody.”

“I don’t like to tell a picture of Aunt Rody. She is so old, so old—and she isn’t happy—and I don’t believe she’s good. If it were not for Aunt Rody I should think all old people were good; that all you had to do to be good was to grow up and grow old.”

“She is not happy. Once, years and years ago, so long ago that almost everybody has forgotten, she had a bitter disappointment.”

“What was it about, mother?” asked the girl, who always wove a love-story into the stories she planned as she stepped about the kitchen, or darned and mended the household wear.

“She was ready to be married—she learned that the man she loved—and Aunt Rody could love in those days—was a very, very bad man; he deceived her; it did not break her heart, or soften it; it made it hard. Unless we forgive, our hearts grow hard; she could not forgive; she has said that she does not know how to forgive. Only in forgiving do our hearts grow like God’s heart. He is always forgiving.”

“I forgave somebody once,” remembered Judith; “mother,” with a start, “I do not always forgive Aunt Rody when she is ugly to me; if I do not will I have a hard heart?”

“Yes. That spot toward Aunt Rody will grow harder and harder. You cannot love God with the part of your heart that does not forgive.”

“Oh, deary me,” groaned Judith, springing up. “Will you like milk-toast to-night? And prunes? Don says I know how to cook prunes.”

“Perhaps he will come to supper.”

“Then he must have a chop. Mother, I like to keep house. It’s easy. It’s easier than forgiving,” she said, with her merry little laugh, and a deep-down heartache.

II. SQUARE ROOT AND OTHER THINGS.

“Let never day or night unhallowed pass;

But still remember what the Lord hath done.”

—Shakespeare.

“Judith, would you like to go up to Lottie’s room for an hour?”

Judith’s mother was still sitting before the grate with her feet lifted to the fender; the tall figure of Donald Mackenzie stood behind the wheel chair, bending, with his folded arms upon the back of the chair.

“Yes, mother,” replied the voice from the kitchen, a busy, pre-occupied voice.

Don had wiped the dishes for her, brought up coal, taken down ashes, and declared that his three chops were the finest he had ever eaten.

“Lottie and her books just went up,” said Judith standing in the door-way, and untying her kitchen apron. “Don, will you call me when you go?”

“Yes, Bluebird; I can stay but an hour; I have to call for Miss Marion; she has gone to a King’s Daughters’ meeting, and I told her I would stop on my way home; I have to pass the house,” he explained in reply to an impatient movement in the wheel chair. Judith went out softly and ran lightly up the stairway.

“Aunt Hilda,” began the penitent voice above Aunt Hilda’s head, “I have come to confess.”

“Don, I wish I had warned you.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked, miserably.

“Because I thought you had common sense.”

“It is a case of common sense.”

Judith’s fingers tapped lightly on the third story door.

“Come in,” called a girlish voice.

“Are you studying? May I stay and study too?”

“You are always ahead of me,” grumbled Lottie.

“Because I take longer lessons, and mother has no one else to teach. But she was tired to-day, and I couldn’t ask her about that dreadful thing in square root. Did you find out?”

“Yes, and it’s as easy as mud.”

Both girls laughed.

“Bensalem mud isn’t easy; you think you are going through to China every spring when the roads are bad.”

Judith had brought her pencil and pad; for half an hour the girls put their heads together over square root; then Lottie Kindare threw her book across the small room to the bed.

“Judith, I know something new to tell you; Grace Marvin told me to-day at recess, and once it came true. I’ll show you.”

On the lowest shelf of the little book-case Lottie found her Bible; it was dusty, but she did not notice that.

With their chairs very near together, the Bible in Lottie’s lap, the girls sat silent a moment; Judith’s luminous eyes were filled with expectation.

“Now wish for what you want most,” commanded Lottie, impressively.

“I wish most of all for mother to be strong enough to go to Bensalem with Aunt Affy when she comes next week.”

Lottie colored and looked uncomfortable; this evening before she came up stairs, her mother had told her that the doctor had stopped down stairs to say that Mrs. Mackenzie must be urged to make no effort to go into the country; it was too late.

“Not that; something else,” said Lottie, impatiently, “not such a serious thing.”

“But I want that most,” said Judith, piteously.

“Then choose what you want second.”

“Then I want second to go to boarding-school.”

“That’s good,” exclaimed Lottie relieved, “now, shut your eyes and open the Bible and put your finger down, and if it touches: ‘And it came to pass,’ it will come to pass.”

“How queer,” said Judith delighted, “what an easy way to find out things. I wish I had known it before.”

“So do I, for then I might have known that I couldn’t have had a navy blue silk for Christmas; and I hoped for it until the very day.”

Without any misgiving, Judith closed her eyes and opened the Bible; her heart beat fast, her fingers trembled; she dared not open her eyes and see.

“No, you haven’t your wish,” said Lottie’s disappointed voice; “it reads: ‘And a cubit on one side, and a cubit on the other side’—that’s dreadful and horrid; I’m so sorry, Ju.”

So was Judith; sorry and frightened.

“Now, I’ll try. I wish for a gold chain like Grace Marvin’s,” she said, bravely. Judith looked frightened; but what was there to be afraid of? It was not like fortune-telling; it was the Bible.

Judith watched her nervously; she was disappointed if it said in the Bible that she could never go to boarding-school; but, oh, how glad she was that she had not asked the Bible if her mother would ever be strong enough to go to Bensalem. She could not have borne nothing but a cubit about that. She would hate a “cubit” after this.

“There!” cried Lottie jubilantly, “I have it. See.”

Over the fine print near Lottie’s finger, Judith bent and read: “And it came to pass.”

“Isn’t that splendid?” said Lottie, “but I wish you had got it. Do you want to try again?”

“No,” hesitated Judith, “it frightens me, and I’m afraid it’s wicked.”

“Wicked,” laughed Lottie, “how can it be wicked?”

“I cannot explain how—but I’m sure mother would not like it.”

“But your mother is so particular,” explained Lottie, “everybody isn’t. She thinks there’s a right and wrong to everything.”

“But isn’t there?” persisted Judith.

“No,” contended Lottie boldly, but with a fear at her heart; “there isn’t about this. This is right.”

“I hope it is,” said Judith, brightening.

“We tried it at noon recess one day, and John Kenney came and looked on. He didn’t say what he thought.”

“Who is John Kenney?”

“The brightest and handsomest boy in the High School. He’s up head in Latin and everything. He was at my New Year’s Eve party. Don’t you remember? He sang college songs.”

“He’s the big boy that found a chair for me, and gave me ice cream the second time. I shall always remember him,” said Judith, fervently. “I did not know his name; when I think about him, I call him John. John is my favorite name for a man; it has a strong sound, a generous sound, and I like the color of it.”

“The color,” repeated Lottie, amazed.

“Don’t names have color and sound to you?” asked Judith, surprised. “John is the deepest crimson to me, a glowing crimson. John belongs to self-sacrifice and generous deeds. John is a hero and a saint.”

Lottie laughed noisily. Judith was the queerest girl. Her things were always getting mixed up with thoughts. Lottie did not care for thoughts. School, dress, parties, Sunday-school, summer vacations, John Kenney, dusting and making cake, jolly times with her father, and home times and making calls with her mother, were only “things” to this girl of fifteen; if there were “thoughts” in them, she missed the thoughts. She was daring and handsome; Judith admired her because she was so different from herself.

“I don’t believe my mother would care,” said Lottie, honestly, as she laid her Bible in its place upon her book-shelf.

“But your mother is different,” pleaded Judith.

“Yes, my mother is well; I suppose that makes the difference.”

With a sigh over her disappointment, for, somehow, she thought the Bible could not be wrong, Judith went back to pad and pencil and another hard example in square root.

“Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home,” chanted Don’s voice in the hall below.

“He has a different name for you every time,” said Lottie. “Don’t tell your mother if it will worry her.”

“I never tell her things that worry her,” replied Judith; “I’ve been waiting three months to tell her that I have burnt a hole in the front of my red cashmere and do not know how to mend it. When I go to Sunday-school she sees me with my coat on, and after Sunday-school I hurry and put on a white apron.”

With her arithmetic and pad, and a very grave face, Judith hastened down stairs.

“Your mother is full of hope about Bensalem,” comforted cousin Don; “I have said good-bye, for I expect to sail for Genoa on Saturday. She gave me your photograph to take with me. I will write to you at Bensalem; and if anybody ever hurts you, write to me quick and I’ll come home and slay them with my little hatchet.”

“Are you going—so soon?” she asked, in an unchildish way; “what will mother do without you?”

“She will have you and Aunt Affy. I wasn’t going so soon, but I found it is better. Kiss your cousin Don.”

“Shall you stay long?”

“Long enough to go to London to buy me a wife,” he laughed; “kiss your cousin Don.”

She kissed her cousin Don with eyes so filled with tears that she did not see the tears in his eyes. The street door fastened itself behind him; in the quiet street she heard his quick step on the pavement.

Her mother was sitting in the firelight with her head resting upon her hand.

“Mother, Don’s gone,” burst out Judith.

“Yes, for a while. He will never forget his little cousin.”

“Genoa is a long way off.”

“Only a few days’ travel. It is good for him to go. He is engaged to do some work on a paper, and he has always desired to see the world afoot. It is good for him,” Don’s Aunt Hilda repeated.

“But it isn’t good for us, mother.”

“I hope it is not bad for us.—But I would be glad for him not to go—just yet,” she sighed.

“Will Miss Marion, his brown girl, like it?” inquired Judith, unexpectedly.

“She is not—why do you say that?”

“I don’t know, I saw her; I shouldn’t think he would like to go and leave us all,” said Don’s little cousin, chokingly, keeping back the tears.

“He has a heartache to-night, poor boy. Now, little nurse, mother’s tired. We will have prayer and go early to bed.”

III. “WAS THIS THE END?”

“The worst is not

So long as we can sing: This is the worst.”

—Shakespeare.

The two parlors were swept and dusted; Marion Kenney enjoyed the Friday sweeping; she stood in the center of the back parlor, cheese-cloth duster in hand, taking a satisfied survey of the two comfortable, old-fashioned rooms.

“Well, you are picturesque!” exclaimed a voice from the doorway of the back parlor.

With all her twenty-one years, Marion Kenney was girlish enough to give a swift, shy look the length of the rooms to the long mirror between the windows in the front parlor. But picturesque was only—picturesque.

“I don’t see what a girl has to dress herself in furbelows for,” he went on, ardently, and with evident embarrassment, “when there’s nothing more becoming than the housekeeping costume; you are as bewitching in that red sweeping-cap as in your most fashionable headgear.”

“I like my morning dresses, too,” she said, with a flutter of breath and color, “perhaps because I’m nothing but a humdrum girl at home.”

“The humdrum girl is getting to be the girl of the age,” he ran on, his words tumbling over each other in the desire to say, for once in his life, the least harmful thing; “all her education tends to bring her down, or up, to the humdrum, if you mean the hum of housekeeping ways. With a sensible education, literary and musical tastes (not talents), a sweet temper, a pretty manner, and the tact that brings out the best in a man, if that is humdrum”—he broke off abruptly, for he had kindled a light in her face that he had no right to see.

“Have I told you about my little cousin Judith? But I know I have. She’s a womanly little thing—too womanly. She’s the sweetest prophecy of a woman. Oh, I remember I promised to take you to see my Aunt Hilda. But that’s another thing to be laid over. If I live to keep all my promises I shall live forever.”

“Don’t say that,” she urged, “you are not just to yourself. That is the only promise you have failed to keep to me, and there’s time enough for that.”

“I fear not,” he answered, seriously, “she is going away, and so am I.”

He came to her and laid the photograph in her hand.

“Oh, how sweet!” was Marion’s quick exclamation.

“It is sweet; but she is better than sweet; she has courage.”

“The eyes are too sad for such a girl—how old is she?”

“Nearly thirteen. I took her to New York for a day’s outing, and we had the picture taken. She was anxious about leaving her mother so long; the people in the house were with Aunt Hilda, but Lottie, the girl in the house, is a flighty thing, and Judith was not trusting her. I saw the look, but I couldn’t hinder it. It will go about through Europe with me. Did Roger tell you last night—I asked him to—that I’m off for my long-talked-of tour around the world?”

“No,” replied Marion, startled out of her self-command.

“Perhaps he came home late. I wanted to prepare you. It is not so sudden in my thoughts. But I always do things suddenly after years of thinking about them. My father wanted me to do this. He said if I were not careful, money and literary tastes would make me an idle dog. That set of Ruskin in my room I have left for you. You have made my winter here so home-like, so refreshingly ‘humdrum,’ that I don’t know how to thank you. When Roger begged me to come Thanksgiving Day I feared that I would be one too many, but you all took me in so naturally that I feel as if I had grown up in your old house with you and Roger. It’s awfully hard to go, now I’ve come to the point; somehow I hated my ticket as soon as I took it into my hand. But I knew Aunt Hilda and Judith were going to Bensalem, and I cannot be with them there. But—you will write to me?” he asked, pausing in his rush of words.

He had vowed that he would not speak of letters, but the unconscious appeal of her attitude, the look that he felt in the eyes that could not lift themselves had given his heart an ache, that, the next instant, he hated her for making him feel. What right had she to hold him so? He was Roger’s friend. He had only been kind, and frank and considerate toward her, and grateful, because she had touched his life with a touch like healing—he was a better fellow than he was last winter; he had told her one confidential Sunday twilight that he almost wanted to be a Christian.

“When will you—come back?” she faltered, speaking her uppermost thought.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered, roughly. “They may keep me there years, if I do well for the paper—or I may study there—Judith and her mother may bring me home—I have promised Aunt Hilda to take Judith for my sister; that is a rousing responsibility for a bachelor like me. I have been near them this winter, which was one of my reasons for coming here. Now I think of it, perhaps it would have been better if I had never come.”

“I think it would.”

The slow, impressive words uttered themselves. She heard them as if another voice had spoken them. They told the whole truth, the whole, terrible, sorrowful truth, and he knew it.

“Good-bye,” she said, with a flash of defiance.

“Good-bye,” he said, not seeing the hand held firmly toward him.

“I will not write to you—you have no right to ask it.”

“No, I have not,” he answered humbly, “I have no right to anything; not even to ask you to become my wife.”

She lifted her proud eyes; her lips framed the words that her tongue refused to speak.

“I beg your pardon. I hardly know what I said.”

“It is hardly necessary to tell me that.”

“And you will not write to me?”

“No.”

“I am unhappy enough,” he blundered, “I never thought our happy winter would end like this. I did not mean it to end like this.”

It was ended then. She herself had ended it. He would never hear the new music she was practicing for him; they would not read together the “Essays of Elia” he had given her last week; she could never tell him—

“I must catch the next train; Roger and I have a farewell dinner in New York to-day. Old fellow, I’m sorry to leave him. I suppose when I return I shall find him rusting out in Bensalem; for he’s determined to go there against all the arguments I can bring up. Good-bye, Marion.”

“Good-bye,” she said, again, allowing her fingers to stay a moment in his hand.

“God bless you, dear.”

She remembered the blessing afterward; afterward, she remembered, too: “and forgive me.” Or did she imagine that? Why should he say that? How had he hurt her? He had only been like Roger.

She had said—what did she say that he should ask her to become his wife when he had not once thought of it all winter—when he was going away for years without thinking of it.

In her bewilderment she could not recall the terrible and true words she herself had spoken, she imagined them to be beyond everything more dreadful than she would dare think; they burned her through and through, these words that had said themselves. Were they hurting him every hour as they were hurting her?

Impetuous she knew herself to be; frank to a fault Roger plainly told her that she was; often and often her outbursts were to her own heart-breaking; but nothing before had she ever done like this; there was no excuse for this, no healing; he would despise her as long as he lived, and she would have no power ever to forget.

Shame that he understood, that he had all the time understood, was burning her up like a fever; that he was gone she was unfeignedly glad, that she might see his dear face no more, she sometimes prayed. Still, with it all, her life went on as usual; the errands down town, the calls, her Sunday-school class, her King’s Daughters’ meetings, her regular hours for practice, the cake-making, the sweeping, she even began to read one of the volumes of Ruskin she found on the table in his chamber, with her name and his initials written in each book; her life went on, her life with the heart gone out of it; her life went on, but herself seemed staying behind somewhere.

It was a relief that Roger was away a part of every week, Roger, whom nothing escaped; the others saw nothing,—she believed there was nothing for them to see.

IV. BENSALEM.

All service ranks the same with God;

If now, as formerly he trod

Paradise, his presence fills

Our earth, each only as God wills

Can work.

—Robert Browning.

In large black letters the word Post Office stared down the Bensalem street from the end door of a small white house. A plump lady in gray pushed open the door; the bell over the door sharply announced her entrance; she stepped into the tiny room; straight before her a door was shut, at her right were rows of glass pigeonholes with numerals pasted upon them; no head was visible at the window the pigeonholes surrounded; while she stood ready to tap upon the closed door that led into the sitting-room, the sound of a horn clear and loud gave her a start and betrayed her into a quick exclamation: “Why, deary me. What next?”

“Come in here, come in here,” called a shaky voice from the other side of the closed door.

She pushed the door open, to be confronted by the figure of an old man lying in bed with a tin horn in his hand.

“Come right in, Miss Affy,” the old man said cheerfully; “I’ve got one of my dreadful rheumatic days and can’t twist myself out of bed; I’ve had my bed down here for a week now. I’ve got all the mail in bed with me. Sarah had to go out and milk and feed the chickens, so she brought the few letters and papers that were left over in here for me to take care of. Doctor says I’ll be about in a week or so, if he can keep the fever down. I never had rheumatic fever before. Nobody comes this time of day for letters. Nothing happens about five o’clock excepting feeding the chickens. Sarah milks earlier than most folks so as to tend the mail, when the stage gets in. She went out earlier than usual to-day because she forgot the little chickens at noon. She just put her head in to say she had taken a new brood off. Do sit down a minute. Didn’t Mr. Brush tell you I had rheumatic fever? Sarah must have told him when he came for his paper, night before last. She tells everybody. I blew the horn to call Sarah in, but I don’t believe she’ll come until she gets ready. The mail doesn’t mean anything to her excepting getting our pay regular. There’s all the letters on the foot of the bed; you can pick yours out. Sarah said you had a letter, and she guessed it was from your niece, Mrs. Mackenzie, or her little girl. Yes, that’s it. Mr. Brush’s paper is there, too.”

The plump lady in gray, with a long gray curl behind each ear, picked among the letters and papers at the foot of the untidy bed, and found a letter in a pretty hand addressed to Miss Affy S. Sparrow, and a newspaper bearing the printed label, Cephas Brush.

“That is all,” remarked the Bensalem postmaster; “never mind fixing them straight; I get uneasy and tumble them around.”

“I will sit here and read the letter, if I may.”

“Oh, yes, do. I haven’t heard any news to-day.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t brought you any,” said Miss Affy, “and you will not care for my letter.”

“Oh, yes, I shall,” he answered, eagerly. “I was wishing I could read all the letters to amuse me. I did read Mr. Brush’s paper. I tucked it all back smooth; I knew he wouldn’t care.”

“He will call and bring you papers,” promised Miss Affy, tearing open the envelope with a hair-pin.

“I wish he would. And a book, too. I wanted Sarah to take my book back to the library to-day, and get another to read to-night if I can’t sleep, but she said she hadn’t time; and, she can’t now, because there’s supper and the mail coming in,” he groaned. “I had an awful night last night; and if it hadn’t been for ‘Tempest and Sunshine,’ I don’t know how I should have got through it.”

“That was enough for one night,” laughed the lady at the window reading the letter. “I will try to find you something better than that for to-night.”

“Will you go to the library for me? That’s just like you, Miss Affy.”

“Yes, I will go. If I cannot find anything I like I will call somewhere else. There should be books enough in Bensalem to help you through the night.”

“Is your letter satisfactory?” he questioned, curiously, as she slipped it back into the envelope.

“Mrs. Mackenzie is very feeble; she wishes to come to Bensalem for the change, and asks me to go and bring her and Judith.”

“But you and Miss Rody will not want the trouble of sick folks.”

“We want her,” said Miss Affy, rising; “I will leave your book in the post-office, Mr. Gunn, so you need not blow the horn when you hear me open the door.”

“But it may not be you; how shall I know?”

“True enough. Blow your horn, then.”

“You can look in if it’s you, and Sarah isn’t there.”

“Where is the book to take back?”

“‘Tempest and Sunshine.’ Oh, Sarah hasn’t finished it yet. I forgot that,” he said disappointedly. “She read it yesterday and gave me nothing but bread and milk for supper, and I wanted pork and eggs. She was on it long enough to finish,” he grumbled.

“No matter, then. I’ll get one for myself. It will be the first book I have taken from the library.”

“And you such a reader, too. How many magazines do you take? I’d like some of your old magazines while I’m laid up.”

“Mr. Brush will bring you a big bundle. But I will go to the library now, for he may not wish to bring them to-night.”

The school library was kept at the house of one of the school trustees; the errand gave Miss Affy another quarter of a mile to walk, and it also gave her the opportunity of a call upon Nettie Evans, whose small home was next door to the school-library. Cephas Brush had told her that she knew how to kill more birds with one stone than any woman he knew.

She walked past the syringa bushes of the school trustee’s front yard, and knocked on the front door with the big brass knocker; there was no response excepting the sound of rubbing and splash of water that came through the open kitchen window. Miss Affy knocked the second time with more determined fingers. It was a pity to take Mrs. Finch from her washing, but it would be more of a pity to let that old man toss in pain and groan for a book to read. As she gave the second knock she wondered if his lamp were safely arranged, and if the reading by lamp-light did not injure his eyes; she would look for a book with good type.

The kitchen door was quickly opened, a woman with rolled-up sleeves and dripping, par-boiled fingers called out pleasantly: “Why don’t you come to this door?”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Finch,” said Miss Affy, walking past another syringa bush, “I came to the Circulating Library.”

“The Circulating Library is where I am. I keep it in the kitchen, because I cannot circulate about my work to attend it,” replied Mrs. Finch, extending a hospitable wet hand; “You see I’m late to-day; usually my washing is all out at eleven o’clock. But his folks came to dinner, three of them, unexpectedly—Monday, too, and I had to spring around and cook a dinner; the Sunday left-overs wouldn’t do. They didn’t leave the house until half-past two, so I had to leave the dinner dishes, piled them up in the shed, under a pan, and put on my boiler again. It don’t often happen, and I put a good face on it.”

“You turn a very cheery face toward life, Mrs. Finch.”

“Well, I try to. It’s all I’ve got to give anyway;” Mrs. Finch replied, removing the cover from the boiler and poking at the clothes with a long clothes-stick; the steam rolled out the door and windows; as the room was cleared, Miss Affy discovered a high mahogany bureau with brass rings, the top of which was covered with books in neat piles.

“You are welcome to look at the books and take one. I wish you would sit down, Miss Affy, I can talk while I work. I wish I might stay and wash the dishes for you.”

Miss Affy prayed every day, “Use me, Lord, any way, any where.”

“With that dress on?” said Mrs. Finch, regarding the new spring suit with favor. “I couldn’t help looking at you in church, if it was Sunday, and thinking that you looked sweet enough to be a bride.”

“Thank you. I am fond of this dress,” replied Miss Affy in her simple, sweet way.

“When you are married, you must be married in gray. I was married in white. Thirty years ago.”

“I remember it,” said Miss Affy, “Cephas and I were there.”

“Don’t think about the dishes. It’s just like you.”

“I would more than think about them, but I must call on Nettie, and then I promised to read awhile to Mrs. Trembly; she is more blind than she was, and Agnes breaks her heart because she cannot find more time to read to her and amuse her.”

“They should come before dishes. People first, I say. That’s why I’m behind with my washing. People first, I say to Jonas, and he looks scornful. But it will pay some day.”

“You have not a catalogue?”

“A seed catalogue? We’ve never had a call for that. I thought everybody had one.”

“So we have, dozens. I meant a catalogue of the books. I would like to know what our boys and girls are reading.”

“Grown people, too. Everybody reads the books. Every time Mr. Gunn is laid up he is crazy for books. Look them over; lots of them are out. No matter how you put them back, if you only pile them up.”

“But you have a book in which to put down my name and the number of the book I take.”

“Oh, no; take any you like. I couldn’t be bothered that way. We expect new books. The last entertainment the school children had was to raise money for books. We don’t get anything for keeping the books, but Jonas is the greatest reader that ever was; he has read them all. But I never have time. I don’t know what is in any of them.”

“Your husband knows. I am glad he reads them. Our young people must be taken care of. Books have been everything to me. These books are an influence in Bensalem.”

“I hope so,” replied the keeper of the books, not thinking for an instant that they could be otherwise than a good influence.

“Excuse me if I go on with my work; that is the last boiler-full.”

“I would not stay if I interrupted you,” said Miss Affy. “I may take considerable time, for I want to know what our boys and girls are reading. I know every book in the Sunday-school library, but I had forgotten that Bensalem boasted a public school library.”

After a half-hour’s search, Miss Affy’s choice was made; the type of the book was not large enough for the old man’s reading at night, but the story was excellent: “Samuel Budget, the Successful Merchant.”

“I’m sorry about the type,” she said, “but it is better than the newspapers.”

“The type? Is that the name of the story?” questioned the woman at the wash-tub.

“The print I should say. Thank you for letting me come. But I am sorry to leave those dishes.”

“Don’t be sorry. My kitchen will be very sweet when the syringas are out. And don’t think I’m always so late with my washing. It was all his folks.”

“How is Nettie these days?”

“Miserable enough. She doesn’t know how to get outside of her poor little self. But then, who of us does, until we are pulled out?” she asked, with cheerful philosophy, as Miss Affy went away past the syringa bushes.

Miss Affy spent an hour in Nettie Evans’s chamber, telling the little girl stories about her great-niece, Judith Mackenzie, who lived in the city with her dear, sick mother, and they both were soon coming to Bensalem, and Judith would love to visit her often, and Judith told stories, that were worth telling; last summer in the evenings, in Summer Avenue, she had a dozen boys and girls on the steps, listening to her stories continued from one evening to another. Nettie’s white face grew glad, and in the night she was comforted by the thought of the coming of the story-teller. Then Miss Affy crossed the street to the one-story yellow house and read from a Sunday-school library-book to blind Mrs. Trembly, whose only daughter had little time to spare her mother from her housekeeping and dressmaking, and on her way home, stopped at the Post-office with “Samuel Budget.”

At the supper table, she remarked to Cephas and her sister Rody: “I do hope our new minister will have a good wife. Bensalem needs the ministry of a woman—a real deaconess.”

“As if you weren’t one,” said Cephas, with admiration in his eyes.

“But I’m not the minister’s wife.”

“Nor anybody else’s,” retorted Aunt Rody, sharply, with a look at the bald-headed, white-whiskered man opposite her at the foot of the table. The look passed over him instead of going through him, as he gave a laugh, a contented laugh that hurt Aunt Rody, even more than she had intended her look to hurt him.

Those two would circumvent her some day; the longer she lived the more sure she was of it, and the more would it cut her to the quick. Every year she fought against it (if one can fight with no antagonist), the more rebelliously she was set against it. There was but one hope for her: that she would outlive one of them; she hoped to outlive both of them.

V. DAILY BREAD AND DAILY WILL.

“We walk by faith and not by sight.”

“Creatures of reason do not necessarily become

unreasonable when they consent to walk by faith; nor

do creatures of trust necessarily become faithless

when they are gladdened in a walk by sight.”

Judith sat in the bay-window with a book in her lap; a box of books had come by express to Miss Judith G. Mackenzie the very day her Cousin Don sailed for Genoa; they were books written for children; they were all Judith’s own.

With the light of the sunset in her face, Judith sat reading Jean Ingelow’s “Stories Told to a Child.”

“O mother, it is too splendid for anything,” she exclaimed; “when you are rested I will read it to you.”

“Is your ironing all done?”

“Yes, mother.”

“And Aunt Affy’s bed made?”

“All made. Mrs. Kindare put up the cot herself and lent me two blankets. It is a cunning room; Aunt Affy will like it; Mrs. Kindare said she could spare the room better than not, and Aunt Affy may stay a month, waiting until we can go home with her.”

“Put away your book, dear; and come and sit on the rug close to me. I want to be all alone with my little girl once more before Aunt Affy comes.”

Reluctantly Judith closed the book; she remembered afterward that she thought she would rather finish the story than go and sit on the rug and talk to her mother.

“Mother,” she began, as brightly as though a minute ago she had not wished to finish the story first, “Don might have stayed with us all winter and had that room to sleep in.”

“Yes, I thought of that. It would have made a difference in somebody’s life.”

“Whose life?” Judith questioned.

“In his own,” replied her mother, “and other people’s. I did not intend to speak my thought aloud.”

The sunset was in the room: it was over Judith, and over her mother.

“Was he sorry he did not come here?” Judith persisted.

“I think he was. He said we would have made him so comfortable. He would have taken his meals with Mrs. Kindare.”

“Are you sorry, too?”

“No—not exactly. If it were a mistake, it will be taken care of—it is very queer to trust God with our sins and not with our mistakes.”

“I made a ‘mistake’ that night he was here, mother; I did not mean to make a sin.”

“Tell me, dear.”

“I thought I would never tell. I was afraid it would worry you. But I cried after I went to bed. You will think me naughty and silly.”

“Do I ever?”

“Yes, oh, yes,” smiled Judith, “you always do every time I am.”

“I could not lie down in peaceful sleep to-night if I believed that my little daughter kept a thought in her heart she would rather not tell her mother.”

“But I shouldn’t keep silly thoughts in my heart.”

“That is what mothers are for—to hear all the silly things.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” decided Judith, bringing herself from a lounging posture, upright, and yet not touching her mother’s knees; “that night Lottie said there was a good way to find out what would happen to you next—to wish for a thing and shut your eyes and open the Bible and put your hand on a verse, and if it said And it came to pass you would certainly have it. We both did it, and she got her wish and I didn’t get mine. My heart was heavy, for I was afraid you wouldn’t like it as soon as I did it.”

“I do not like it. But I am glad you did it.”

“Why, mother!”

“Because I can talk to you about something I might never have thought about.”

“I like that,” said Judith, comforted; “I hope Cousin Don’s mistake will be good for him.”

“It is already. What do you want to know about yourself?”

“Things that will happen, grown-up things. I make castles about grown-up things. When I make an air-castle I am never a little girl, but a big girl, fifteen or eighteen, and that kind of things happen; the kind of things that happen to girls in books. Is that silly?”

“No; it is only not wise. It spoils to-day, and to-day is too good to be spoiled. God has made to-day for us, and we slight his gift by passing it by and trying to find out the things that will happen to us to-morrow. Suppose you would not read the children’s books Cousin Don sent you, but coax him to give you grown-up books.”

“I couldn’t be so mean,” said Judith warmly.

“But questions do come to us, wonders about our grown-up time. Is it not trusting God more to wait for His answers?”

“Oh, yes, I am waiting—unless I can find a way—like that way—to find out.”

“That is not God’s way; he never told us to find out his will that way. When he said, ‘And it came to pass,’ it was about something that had happened, not about something that will happen; and about someone else, and not about you. The Bible was not written to tell us such things.”

“But I didn’t know that really,” said Judith, miserable, and ready to cry.

“That was a mistake, not a sin. We all make mistakes before we know better. If you should do so again, it would be a sin, because now you know better.”

“But people did cast lots in Bible times. Don’t you know about finding out about another disciple to make up the twelve after Judas killed himself? I read that to you this morning.”

“Yes, I remember that. Casting lots was one of God’s ways in old times to discover his will. The lot was cast into the lap, and the disposal thereof was of the Lord. They knew God was willing for them to cast lots.”

“Yes,” said Judith, in her intelligent voice.

“And this, I just thought of it. That time about choosing another disciple was the last time. After the Holy Spirit was given there was no need; the Holy Spirit always reveals the will of God.”

Judith’s eyes grew dull; she could not understand; she felt dimly that she had done wrong in not trusting God to tell her about her “wish” in his own way.

“Whenever, in all your life to come, a question about your future comes to you, a longing to know about something that may happen to you, or may not happen—but I should not say that; I should say about something God may will to give you, or may will to keep from you, say this to yourself: I need not think about it; God knows all about it, for he makes it; he will tell me as soon as he wants me to know.”

“Yes,” said Judith, with a child’s confidence.

“After that, it would be not only ‘silly,’ but faithless to think about it. Every day brings its own answer; your daily bread and God’s daily will come together; his bread gives us strength to do his will. Will mother’s little girl remember?”

“Yes,” said Judith gravely; “and when you see me forgetting you must remind me. Will it be wrong if I say ‘daily will’ when I say ‘daily bread’?”

“Not wrong,” answered her mother, smiling, “only that it comes in the prayer before daily bread.”

“Does it?”

“Repeat it and see.”

Judith repeated: “Our Father, who art in heaven; Hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread—Why, so it does. But I didn’t put them together before.”

“The will comes first. If we do his will, he will not forget the things we long for every day. Love his will better than your own will and wishes.”

“That’s hard,” said Judith, “I don’t know how.”

“That is what you are in the world for, to learn how.”

Judith arose and stood before the grate with sweet, grave, troubled eyes.

The yellow hair, the innocent face, the blue dress, the loving touch of lips and fingers, the growing into girlhood; how could she give them up and go?

“O, mother, mother!” cried Judith, turning at the sound of a stifled cry, “Are you worse? What shall I do?” then in a tone of quick, astonished joy, “Oh, here’s Aunt Affy at the door!”

VI. THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD.

“What’s the best thing in the world?

Something out of it, I think.”

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

From Genoa there came a note to Marion:—

“Dear friend Marion:

To-day’s mail brings me saddest and most unexpected news. I believed my Aunt Hilda would live years; I would not have left her had I thought she would be taken so soon. She died in Summer Avenue before she could be taken to Bensalem. Judith has written herself, the bravest child’s letter. She is in Bensalem with two old aunts of her mother.

Roger hopes to have you for his housekeeper; you will be near Judith; will you take her under your wing? Her mother especially wished her not to go to boarding-school. She has always been a child of promise; she may fizzle out as promising children do and become only an ordinary girl; but she will always be sweet and brave, which is better than being brilliant. One sweet woman is worth a thousand brilliant ones; that is the reason there are so many more sweet ones. I would change my plans and return for her sake, but what can a bachelor cousin do for her? She will be sheltered from harmful influences in Bensalem. She will write me regularly. I have written to Roger about her money affairs.

Your friend,

Don.”

In reply Marion wrote the briefest note:—

“Dear friend Don:

I will do my best for Judith.

Yours truly,

Marion.”

“It will be the best thing in the world for Marion,” replied the voice of Marion’s mother.

“There is no best thing in the world for Marion,” Marion told herself wearily, rising from the back parlor sofa, where she had thrown herself to be alone, and stepping softly across the room to the door.

To be alone in the dark was the best thing in the world for her; to be alone in the dark forever. For something had happened to her that had never happened to any girl before. With a light tread she went up stairs: she would not have her mother know that she had overheard the remark made to her father—her mother could not know all, only herself and Don Mackenzie knew her cruel secret; he would never tell, not even Roger, and she could sooner die than let the words pass her lips to any human creature. Girls had gone through terrible things before; but no girl ever had gone through this; no girl could, unless she were like herself, and no girl was like herself, so impetuous, so headlong, so frank that frankness became a sin.

In her own chamber she found the darkness and solitude she craved; the darkness and solitude she thought she would crave forever. The voices in the front parlor went on low and steadily, planning a best thing for Marion for whom no best was possible.

“Yes, it will certainly be a good thing,” her father answered in a relieved tone; “she hasn’t been herself since Donald Mackenzie went away.”

“I was afraid when he came,” was the low uttered response.

“Mothers are always afraid,” returned the father, who had urged his coming.

“But I was specially afraid; Don is so attractive, so unconscious of himself, and I know Marion well enough to know that she would make an ideal of him—”

“Nonsense,” was the sharp interruption.

“It may be nonsense, but it is true; it has proved true. Marion is imaginative, as I was at her age: I know how I idealized you—”

“And the reality of me broke your heart,” he said, with a light, fond laugh.

“Yes. Sometimes it did. But I lived through it and learned that you were human, and deliciously human, and, if you will allow me to say so, a great improvement on my girlish ideal.”

“At any rate, I was not afraid to let you try,” he answered; “but Don has gone without giving her the trial. I suspect he saw it and went.”

“I know he did,” said Marion’s mother.

“Does Roger know it?” asked Marion’s father.

“Roger always knows everything and looks as if he knew nothing,” replied the motherly voice; “I think he was relieved when Don went away.”

“You think she will soon get over it?” her father asked. It would have broken Marion’s heart to hear the solicitude in her father’s voice.

“I’m afraid there’s no ‘over it’ for a girl like her; but she is plucky enough to get through it; the worst of it is, Don is such a fine fellow.”

“He had no right to care for her—” her father began angrily.

“He couldn’t help that,” argued her mother.

“Then he should care more, and be a man, and speak his mind—”

“I think he must care for some one else; if he hadn’t he couldn’t resist Marion.”

“Marion is like other girls,” said Marion’s father impatiently; “not a whit prettier—”

“No, not prettier,” she assented, with protest in her tone.

“Or more accomplished,” he insisted.

“She hasn’t accomplishments, beside her fine education, and music—”

“All girls play, I suppose he sees other girls—”

“And she saw but one man. That was the trouble. I wonder how fathers and mothers can help that. Roger wanted him to come to board through the winter, said a boarding-house was dismal, and his mother had just died—well, we can’t help it now. Don has cared for all the children—he was great friends with Maurice and John. If she will go to Bensalem and keep house for Roger, it will be just the thing.”

“I think so myself,” he answered, reasonably.

“Roger will be only too happy; his sister Marion has always been his sweetheart.”

“Bensalem will do,” replied her father, hopefully, shifting all his responsibility; “when we visit them next summer she will be as rosy as ever and singing about the house like a bird.”

“Then Roger must accept that call,” decided Roger’s mother positively. “A year in the country will brush off his student ways—it will be the best thing in the world for both of them.”

“And poor Bensalem?”

“It isn’t poor Bensalem,” she retorted, indignantly. “They knew what they wanted when they called Roger.”

“Roger is a good boy, but he isn’t the least bit brilliant,” said Roger’s father, cheerfully.

“He is something better,” said Roger’s mother.

“But how can you get along without her?”

“Better than Roger can. Besides, Martha and Lou will soon be through school; Roger and Marion are not our only children.”

“You talk as though they were, sometimes,” he retorted. “Anyhow, let the sky fall, but do something for Marion.”

VII. A SMALL DISCIPLE.

“Who comes to God an inch through doubtings dim,

In blazing light God will advance a mile to him.”

—From the Persian.

Aunt Rody gave Judith a nudge. The nudge startled the absorbed reader into dropping, with a thud, the book she held in her hand upon the carpeted floor of the pew; with a crimsoned face Judith stooped and picked up the book; after a moment of deliberation and a defiant flash toward Aunt Rody, stiff and straight in the end of the pew, she re-opened her book and was again lost in the fascinating story. Aunt Rody glared at her, but she turned a page, only half conscious of the wrath that was being heaped up against her; this time it was not a nudge, but a large hand that startled her; the large hand, brown, strong, was laid across the page.

Judith gave a glance, not defiant, into the kindly, grave eyes, then shut the book, straightened herself and tried hard to listen to the minister.

The figure at the other end of the pew, the man’s figure, settled back comfortably to listen, and listened without trying hard.

The kindly, grave eyes under the shaggy black brows never stirred from the minister’s face; once in a while the brown, strong hand stroked the long white beard; Judith watched him as he listened, and then she watched Aunt Rody, unbending, alert, with her deep-set black eyes, her hard-working hands very still in her new, black kid gloves.

When the sermon was ended Judith gave a sigh of relief; she could sit still, she had sat still; but her mind had not followed the minister.

She wished she could like sermons. She liked the Bible. This sermon was not like the Bible.

As she stood in the church doorway, waiting for Aunt Rody, who always had something to tell, or something to ask in the crowd in the aisle, she overheard a loud whisper behind her: “Oh, that’s Judith Mackenzie. She has come to stay with the Sparrow girls. Her mother was their niece. Father died long ago; mother last winter.” To escape further details, the listener stepped forward and down one step; there was a stir and some one stood beside her, a tall young man, not like any one else in Bensalem: she knew without raising her eyes that he was the new minister. She flushed, thinking that he had noticed that she was reading her Sunday School book in church.

“Would you like to be a Christian?” he asked, with something in his tone that made it hard for her to keep the tears back.

This was worse than a rebuke for reading; she might have excused herself for that; for this she had no words. The voice was very low; perhaps no one heard beside herself.

Too startled to speak at first, she kept silent; then, too truthful to speak one word that she was not sure was true, and thinking that she hardly knew what it was to be a Christian, she could not say “Yes”; not daring to say “No,” she stood silent.

“Pray for the Holy Spirit,” he said, moving away.

She knew how to pray; she had prayed all her life; but she had never once prayed for the Holy Spirit. She was afraid to do that.

What would happen to her if she did, she wondered, as she walked down the paved path to the gate; would a tongue of flame come down from heaven and settle on her head? Would she speak with tongues, right there, before them all, in the crowd? Would she heal the sick by prayer and anointing with oil? Would she pray in prayer-meeting, and go about from house to house talking about the Lord Jesus, whose dear, sacred name she seldom took upon her lips?

What a strange thing to say to a girl of thirteen!

There were no young disciples in the Bible; they were all grown up and old.

Just now all she wanted to do was to tell Jesus and his Father everything that troubled her, and everything she was glad of, and read the Bible, and,—“Come Judith,” interrupted Aunt Rody’s shrill voice. She sat on the back seat of the carriage with Aunt Rody; Mr. Brush sat alone on the front seat; Aunt Affy had not come to church to-day; it was her turn to stay at home.

Aunt Rody insisted that some one should always stay at home; there was the silver, and her will, and a great many other things to be guarded from Sunday marauders.

“Judith Grey Mackenzie,” began Aunt Rody, in her most revengeful voice, “you must behave in church or stay at home.”

“I was behaving—I read to help behave; when I cannot understand I think everyday thoughts; isn’t that worse than reading?”

“Nothing is so bad behaved as reading. And all the folks seeing you. What do you suppose the new minister thinks of you?”

“He thinks I am not—”

Her shy lips could not frame the words “a Christian.”

“Not very well brought up,” tartly finished Aunt Rody.

“I brought myself up, that’s the reason then,” replied Judith, her eyes filling with resentful tears. “Mother was always too sick. Cousin Don said my mother was the sweetest mother in the world.”

“You act like a sick mother; but you’ve got an aunt that isn’t sick; and if I ever see you read again in church you shall not go to church for six months. Tell your Cousin Don that.”

“I wouldn’t mind church,” replied Judith.

“To Sunday School then, if that hurts more.”

“Oh, tut, tut,” came good humoredly from the front seat. “Don’t forget your own young days, Rody.”

“I never had any. Just as I shall never have any old age. I’ve never had time to be young or old.”

Judith laughed. Aunt Rody was eighty-four years old.

“Don’t you deceive me about the book, Judith, for I don’t always go to church.”

“Aunt Rody,” with girlish dignity, “I never deceived any one in my life.”

“That’s a good deal to say.”

“I haven’t lived to be eighty-four, but I think I never shall deceive. I would rather die than not be true,” she burst out.

“H’m, you haven’t been tried.”

Judith thought she had; did not this grim, hard old woman try her every day of her life?

The long village street was lined with maples and locusts; inside the yards were horse-chestnut trees, lilacs, and syringas.

All over the beautiful country the fruit trees were in blossom; Judith revelled in the fragrance and delicate tints of the apple-blossom; she called it her apple-blossom spring.

The story and a half red farmhouse, with its slanting roof and long piazza, marked the “Sparrow place”; it had been the Sparrow place one hundred and fifty years. The red farmhouse was built one hundred years ago; the Sparrow girls, the eight sisters, were all born there long before many of the village people could remember.

As Judith stepped up on the piazza the bowed gray head at the window was lifted; the girl went to the open window and stood; Aunt Affy took off her spectacles and laid them in the book she was reading.

Judith thought Aunt Affy read but one book. How could anyone be wise and read only one book?

“Well, dear,” said Aunt Affy in her welcoming tones. To Aunt Affy Judith Grey Mackenzie was the sweetest picture of girlhood in all the world; she was as fresh as the dew, tinted like an apple-blossom, as natural as a wild rose. To everyone else she was a girl of thirteen, with the faults, the forgetfulness, the impetuosity, the thoughtlessness, and above all, the selfishness of girlhood. Her yellow hair fell in long curls to her waist, because her mother had loved it so; her eyes of deepest blue were frank and truth-telling; in her lips, flexible, yet strong, was revealed a world of loving; a world that she had not yet learned herself.

She was impatient, passionate, rebellious; but never was it in face, voice, or attitude when under the witchery of Aunt Affy’s appreciation.

“Aunt Affy, I’ve been wicked,” she confessed in a humiliated voice.

“So have I. I’ve been sitting here grumbling, when I should be the happiest old sinner in the world.”

“I’ve been wickeder than that.”

“How much wickeder?”

“I borrowed a Sunday-school book to take to church because I do not understand Mr. Kenney.”

“Did that help you understand him?”

“I did try at first,” Judith explained, laughing at Aunt Affy’s serious question, “but it was about the things in Revelation, the hard things—”

“Did he not say anything you could understand?”

“No—” said Judith, thinking that his message to her, her own private message, was the hardest of all to understand.

“You were very rude.”

“How was it rude?” Judith questioned, surprised.

“He was speaking to you, and you refused to listen.”

“I was listening to someone else,” said Judith, troubled.

“That was more rude still. That was premeditated rudeness.”

“I hope he did not notice it.”

“You may trust him for that.”

“But I cannot tell him I am sorry; it would choke me to death.”

“And another thing—if he is Christ’s ambassador, and you refused to listen—”

The girl’s eyes filled, and her lips trembled; was it that she had done?

“It’s time to set the table,” were Aunt Affy’s next words, in an unconcerned tone, polishing her glasses with a corner of her white apron. That small, clean old kitchen; how Judith loved it. She loved every kind of work that was done in it, even the wash-tubs, the smell of the suds was exhilarating, and baking and ironing days were her delight. Every nerve and muscle responded to the call to labor.

The south door opened on a flagged walk that led to Aunt Affy’s flower garden, the north door led you out into a deep, square, grassy yard, where the clothes were hung and bleached; a tall, shaggy pine stood sentinel at one side of the door, on the other side ran the bench upon which the milk-pans shone in a row; beyond the grass rose a stone wall, and then there were fields and woods; woods in which the thrush hid, and the whip-poor-will; a brook started from a spring in the woods and tumbled over the pebbles down into the meadows, then out, below the flower garden and across the road, where it was bridged with a stone arch.

In the kitchen was a brick oven, its iron door stood out black among the white-washed bricks; the uneven boards of the kitchen were always scrubbed clean, the stove was brushed into a shining blackness every day, the two tables were as spotless as sand, the scrubbing-brush and Aunt Affy’s strong hands could make them.

Out of the three windows were pictures of which the city-bred girl never wearied. Her apple-blossom spring was the spring of her new birth.

“Aunt Rody, please excuse me,” Judith said, rising from the dinner table.

“You haven’t eaten your custard, and you like it with crab-apple jelly.”

The yellow custard in the big coffee-cup with a broken handle, and the generous spoonful of jelly quivering on top was a temptation; she looked at it, then pushed it away. Nobody would ever know that she was punishing herself for being “rude” in church; it was easier to punish herself than to apologize to Mr. Kenney; and something had to be done.

“I want to study my Sunday-school lesson,” she evaded, and then her heart sank at her deception; she had not told Aunt Rody all the truth.

She fled into the parlor with a question from Aunt Rody pursuing her; her cheeks were burning, and she was trembling with shame and anger.

Why couldn’t Aunt Rody leave her alone? Sometimes she almost hated Aunt Rody. A corner of the stiff, long, horse-hair sofa was her retreat; it was often her retreat; she called it her valley of humiliation.

In her lesson to-day she found the loveliest thing. Aunt Affy was teaching her that the Bible was a treasure-house.

“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

All men know—just by loving—not by doing any great hard thing—by loving—but that was hard, if it meant bearing with Aunt Rody’s misunderstanding and sharpness and fault-finding, and being always on the watch to find evil in you.

But “all men know” was the comfort of it; she need not pray in prayer meeting as Miss Kenney did, nor do the wonderful things the disciples did; all men would know that she wanted to be a Christian, if she tried to be loving.

She repeated the words of Christ in a soft monotone, her small Bible in her hand, and her head pillowed on her hair on the hard sofa-arm.

Aunt Affy pushed the door wider and entered, bringing a glass half filled with crab-apple jelly.

“I saved your custard—it’s on the hanging shelf in the cellar,” she said, opening the door of the chimney cupboard to set the glass in its own space in the row of jelly glasses.

“Aunt Affy,” lifting her tumbled head, and with grave eyes asking her question: “what is—who is a disciple?”

“A disciple is one who learns. You are my disciple when you learn of me. The disciple of Christ is the man, or woman, or child who learns of him. When you are about the farm with Cephas, you are his disciple, in sewing and mending you are Aunt Rody’s, in housekeeping generally you are my disciple.”

Aunt Affy went out, and the tumbled head dropped back to the hard sofa-arm again. Would Christ let her be a “disciple” a little while, and then be a Christian when she grew up, she pondered.

She wanted to learn of him; she would read the Gospels through and through and through. She would learn them by heart. For her lesson to-day she would learn these seven verses he had spoken to his own, real, grown-up disciples.

That afternoon in Sunday-school, after the lesson was ended, the new minister left his class of boys and came to the pulpit stairs and stood and talked to the children; his opening sentence thrilled one small listener:—

“The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”

If you were a disciple, only a disciple, learning and loving, you were called a Christian. Then he spoke of the Holy Spirit; he was the very heart and will of Christ; he spoke in a low, sweet voice to children, a constraining voice, making known the things Christ the Lord would have them do; he showed them the things of Christ.

Had she dared she would have stepped out of her pew and gone up the aisle to the new minister and told him that she did want to be a Christian, and she would not be afraid to ask the Holy Spirit to tell her all the things Christ wanted her to do. Miss Kenney, her teacher and the minister’s sister, noticed the start and flush, the hesitancy, the eager look, as the minister came down the aisle and paused to speak to her girls; she saw Judith’s eyes drop as he took her hand, and then her shy withdrawal of herself.

Suddenly the girl turned, and with the flash of decision in her voice, said bravely, detaining the minister with her trembling little hand:—

“I am sorry I read in church this morning; I will never do it again, even if I don’t understand. Please excuse me.”

“I saw you,” he said, smiling, and taking the brave little hand into both his own; “I will try to talk to you next Sunday. Thank you for the lesson.”

Then shy Judith slipped away, and never told even Aunt Affy that she had apologized to the new minister.

That evening in the twilight, sitting on the piazza alone, she wrote on the fly-leaf of her small Bible, in pencil:—

Judith Grey Mackenzie; A Disciple.

And the date, May 15, 18—.

She thought she would like to tell somebody that she was a disciple. But if they should ask how it happened, she could not tell. It had happened as still as a leaf fluttering in the wind, as softly as the apple-blossoms came; nobody could tell about that. She thought the Holy Spirit must know how it happened.

VIII. THIS WAY, OR THAT WAY?

“My times are in Thy hand, and Thou

Wilt guide my footsteps at Thy will.”

It was six o’clock that May evening, and Joe was running away. He did not know he was running away. He had never been taught to read, and no one had ever told him a story, and his own experience of life was so limited, that he did not know that he was starting out in the world to find adventures, to find good or evil, to find a new life, and that new life, shaped more by what was inside of himself, than what was outside of himself. If the man who just passed him had asked him what he was doing, he would have said, had he not been overcome by one of his fits of shyness, that he was “gittin’ out.”

The air was damp, and sweet with the scent of blossoms. At his right ran a range of low hills, abrupt and green; at his left, as far as he could see, stretched the swamp, miles of meadow, over-flooded in the spring, waving with grass in the summer, and homely with unpainted one-story houses, and out-buildings in various stages of decay; it was a pasture land for the cattle of the farmers in the upland district, and Joe’s bare feet had trodden its miles morning and night ever since he had been old enough to drive the cows.

He went on slowly, with his hands in his pockets, too heavy-hearted to whistle, not thinking about anything, only feeling, with something in his throat that would not be swallowed down, miserable and defiant; remembering nothing in his past to regret not having learned that there was anything in his future to hope for, he was conscious only of something stirring within, stirring to action, to wideness, to freedom, and therefore he must “git out” to find it; therefore he was getting out.

His plan, if he had a plan, was to find a woman in the village who had once spoken kindly to him, and given him a huge slice of warm bread and butter; in the swamp he knew he might find work among the Germans, but the swamp was so lonely at night, and he did not like the ways of the Germans; in all the world he had but one friend, this woman who had spoken kindly to him.

She might not give him work, or a bed, but she would look at him, as no one else ever looked, and she would speak kindly. The road over the hill drew his lagging feet, then he stood, hesitating, at the turn of the hill road and swamp road; the hill road led to people, and a church, a store, where boys and men gathered at night to read the newspaper, and smoke, and have fun; to the blacksmith’s shop, and, most of all, to the little house next door, where the woman lived who had cut that large slice across her big, hot loaf.

A German, in the swamp, had told him to come to him for a home and work, if he ever wanted to leave his place; work he must, and a home—the woman’s face came between him and the German, his heart began to beat very fast, he wondered why his heart beat so fast sometimes, and he took his life in his hands, and started on a run for the road over the hill, where was the only thing in the world that seemed like love, although of love he had never had one thought. Then he began to walk slowly again; he had decided there was no need of hurrying, there was no need of doing anything—he had never been given a reason for doing anything excepting that one or the other of the old men with whom he had lived all his remembered life bade him do it. He had done things because he was told; he did not know why, excepting that because he was told.

If he were being told now to run away, he did not know; he had never thought that he might tell himself to do things. Not for a moment did he believe that the two old men would take the trouble to look for him, or to wish him back; every day, one, or both, said to each other or to him that he was not worth his salt, and would never amount to anything; they must be glad he was gone. But the cows. They would be sorry, especially Beauty; one of the old men would milk her to-night, but they would not pat her and talk to her, and ask her if she were glad she was a cow and not a boy, and was worth her salt, and all her feed beside; she had no friend but him, and she would look around for him with her big eyes; again he stood hesitating—Beauty wanted him—his tears fell fast; but he must go on, he wanted something better than Beauty.

So he went on down the hill, past the pretty parsonage and the church—wondering, if he had no place to sleep, if he might sleep in the church; then past the school-house, with its large play-ground, and turned by the liberty-pole, and walked very slowly along the street until he reached the blacksmith’s shop, and there, in the doorway of the small house, stood the woman looking for him.

“Why, Joe, what are you doing here at milking time?” she asked in a brisk tone, as the boy stopped before the gate.

“I’m done milking for them two old men,” he said, in a voice he tried hard to make brave. “Chris and Sam don’t want me any longer; I’m gittin’ out.” And then, big boy as he was, feeling lost in a strange world, he began to cry.

“There! there! Sonny,” soothed the voice, changing from its briskness into sympathy, as the woman stepped down the three steps; “Come and eat supper with me; I know what I’ll do with you. I’m glad you happened to come along this way.”

Pushing open the gate, she laid her hand on his arm and drew him into the house by his soiled and ragged sleeve.

“We don’t want a boy, haven’t work enough; but I know somebody who does, late in the season as it is. Mr. Brush, Mr. Cephas Brush, he farms the Sparrow place, you know; while he was waiting at the shop this very morning, he came to the well for a drink, and I went out to give him a glass so he needn’t drink out of that rusty tin cup, and he asked me if I knew where he could find a boy. His boy went off in March. He’s a good master, and that’s a good home; Miss Affy is like a mother to every stray thing and you won’t mind if Miss Rody does scold, she never means any harm. I’ll take you down there right after supper. Mr. Evans had his early because he wanted to go to town, and I was feeding my chickens, two hundred and five now,—Nettie puts down every new brood in a book—and couldn’t stop to eat. I didn’t think I was going to have company for supper. Nettie had hers earlier than usual because she was tired, and wanted to go to bed.” She pulled him through the narrow hall as she talked, Joe, once in a while, giving a quick, hard sob, and opened the door into the tiny kitchen.

The tea-kettle on the stove was singing a cheery welcome, the white cloth and pink dishes on the round table in the centre of the room gave him another welcome, and the touch and tone of the woman who had been kind to him brought him the cheeriest welcome of all, as she pushed him down into the chair opposite her own at the table, saying: “I know what men’s cooking is, and I know you are half-starved. Who made the bread?”

“I got that at the store.”

“You had potatoes, of course.”

“Oh, yes, and fried pork, lots of it, and pan-cakes. My! can’t Chris make good pan-cakes!”

“Can he?” inquired Mrs. Evans, doubtfully, taking the tea-pot off the stove and setting it on the table.

“Now, here’s hot fried potatoes for you, and good bread and butter, and a big saucer of rice pudding—Mr. Evans is never tired of rice pudding,—and sponge cake that little Judith brought to Nettie to-day because it is her own baking. Nettie took a bite and said I must put the rest on the supper-table. And you can have tea or milk, or both.”

After bustling about in the shed, Mrs. Evans seated herself at the table opposite her guest.

“Who would have thought I was going to eat supper with you, Joe? The world does turn on its axis once every twenty-four hours, and unexpected things do happen. I’ll tell Nettie all about it tomorrow; it will make a happening in her poor little life.”

Joe gave her a shy, quick glance, then bowed his head; some time, somewhere, not with the old men, certainly, he had bowed his head and said something at the table; he did not remember where it was, or what words he said, or why he said anything at all, but the pretty tea-table, or the savory food reminded him of a life he had once lived; he listened for a chorus of voices:—

“For what we are about to receive—receive—truly thankful.”

It was like music in the boy’s heart; he lifted his head with a light shining in his tear-blurred eyes.

“Well, I never,” ejaculated Mrs. Evans.

The boy held his knife and fork with a grace her husband had not acquired, taking his food as slowly and daintily as a girl.

“Those Tucker men, that old Chris and Sam have no claim on you, and they haven’t done as well by you as they promised they would when they took you, a little fellow, out of the Christie Home. I’ve often spoken to Mr. Evans about it, but he’s so easy going I might as well have talked to the wind. I told our new minister that he must ‘high-way and hedge’ you; he has noticed you; but he is feeling his way among the people, and couldn’t make a stir as soon as he came.”

“Is that where I was?” asked astonished Joe. “I thought I used to be somewhere. They never told me. I seem to remember things that happened before I can remember. They told me that I hadn’t any father or mother, and wouldn’t have any home if they had not taken me in.”

“People thought you ought to be sent to school and Sunday-school, but what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business. I’m glad enough you have left them, but you should have told them you wanted to leave.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good,” he muttered “they wouldn’t have said anything.”

“Now, I’ll put out the cat, and leave the table standing, and bolt the shed door, and lock the front door, and put on my things, and we’ll be off. Nettie is fast asleep and will never miss me.”

“I will wash the dishes for you; we put them under the pump, then wipe them on anything.”

“That wouldn’t suit me, thank you,” laughed Mrs. Evans; “you can hoe corn better than wipe dishes, and Mr. Brush has acres and acres of corn to hoe, and potatoes too: he’s making that old Sparrow farm pay.”

Joe did not know that he had been lost, but he began to feel very much found.

“I’m glad you went out to the well with that glass,” he said, as his hostess wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and tied the blue ribbons of a blue wool hood under her chin.

“I’m usually glad of kind things I do; I suppose that’s one reason I do them.”

Joe unlatched the gate, holding it open for her to pass through, then pushed it shut; Beauty and this woman seemed to belong to the same order of creaturehood; the woman’s eyes were like Beauty’s, soft, and big and brown, and they answered you. She took his hand and drew it under her arm in a sort of comradeship, and then they went on, the woman and the boy, to find the gate that would swing open into a world of which it had never entered the boy’s heart to dream.

The gate was shut and a man in shirt-sleeves with a pipe in his mouth was standing on the mysterious and happy side of it resting his elbows on the pickets, and, attracted by voices, looking up the road in the starlight towards the two figures.

“You stay here, Joe—that’s Mr. Brush. I’ll tell him all your story.”

“My story?” repeated Joe, in amazement.

“You didn’t know you had any,” she laughed. “Well, folks don’t usually until it is all lived through. I didn’t know I had any girlhood until I married and lost it.”

“I haven’t lost anything,” said Joe, bewildered.

“No; and I think you have got something—stand back, till I call you.”

She went on, and Joe heard the two voices exchange a friendly “Good evening,” and then to escape his “story” climbed up the steep, green bank, and waited under a cherry tree. Cherry blossoms were not as pretty as apple blossoms, he meditated; it was queer how the blossoms would fall off, and the hard, green fruit come—but it always did, somehow.

He wished Mrs. Evans would come back and take his hand again, making him feel ashamed and glad, and say, “Joe, you are going home with me. That man doesn’t want you, and I do.”

And there he stood, not still, but first on one bare foot, and then on the other, and then he whistled; the stars shining down through the cherry blossoms were almost as kind as Beauty’s eyes, but they were so far off.

The low voices talked on and on; at last, to the great relief of the boy who was waiting to know if anybody in the world wanted to own him, the man’s voice was raised in a cheerful: “Well, I’ll see Mr. Chris Tucker to-morrow, and make it right.”

And, then, in her brisk way, Mrs. Evans called, “Come, Joe; it is all right.”

The barefoot, ragged boy emerged out of the shade of the cherry limbs and went, faint-heartedly to answer the call.

“Well, Joe,” welcomed the old man, unlatching the gate and throwing it wide open, “come in and stay with me awhile. I guess I want you and you want me.”

But Joe begun to cry, and rub his eyes with the back of his dirty brown hand: “I am sixteen years old, and I am a stump of a thing, and will eat you out of house and home, and shan’t never amount to much.”

“Tut, nonsense!” exclaimed the old man; “don’t you like to work?”

“I never did nothing else; I don’t like nothing else,” replied Joe, dropping his hand, somewhat reassured.

“Who said you are sixteen? Come in and let me have a look at you.”

Joe stepped inside the gate; kind, strong hands drew him within the light that streamed from the kitchen windows and open door.

“Good night, Joe,” said Mrs. Evans.

“Good night,” said Joe.

He had not learned how to say “thank you.”

“They said so,” he replied to the latest question.

“Those men. The Tucker twins. They are seventy, and hale old fellows. I’ll warrant you know how to work. You are not fourteen. You shall do a boy’s work and be a boy. You may grow to be as tall as old Christopher himself. There’s plenty of man-timber in you. Now come and see what the women-folks will say to you.”

Joe shrank back.

“I thought I was going to live with you.”

“And you thought I lived alone like the other old men? I’m a miserable old bachelor, but I’ve got plenty of women-folks, thank the Lord.”

A little girl rushed to the door, and a barking Scotch terrier made a spring at the new-comer.

“Oh, what a dog,” Joe exclaimed, stooping to catch frisking, curly Doodles into his arms. Homesick for Mrs. Evans, frightened and glad, he followed the old man into the kitchen with the curly dog in his arms.

“Affy, here’s the boy I’ve been looking for, and you’ve been praying for, I’ve no doubt.”

Aunt Affy turned and looked at the boy: short, stout, dirty, ragged, with a shock of uncombed black hair, a lock falling over his forehead, long black eyelashes concealed the eyes he kept shyly fixed upon the curly bundle in his arms.

“What is your name, dear?” she inquired.

Joe had never heard “dear” before, but supposed she must be speaking to him; he raised his eyes and smiled; they were shy, honest eyes; Aunt Affy smiled too.

“I am Joe,” he said, pulling Doodles’ ears.

“Do you remember your father and mother?”

“No; I don’t remember nobody but Chris and Sam.”

“Is your name Joseph?”

“I don’t know; I never thought. I guess it’s Joseph—or Jo—no, now I remember another name: Josiah. Is that a boy’s name?”

“A boy’s name, and a king’s name. I am glad your name is Josiah. I will tell you about him some time.”

The little girl stood near the lady, but she did not stare at him, and Joe gave her glances now and then from under his long lashes; he would like to know her name, and what she was here for. A man’s fur cap covered the black head; when he left the house, angry and discouraged, he had put upon his head the first thing he seized.

“Doodles hasn’t given you time to take your hat off, Joe, or did you forget?” suggested Aunt Affy’s unreproachful voice.

“Didn’t forget it,” said Joe, pulling it off and dropping it on the floor. “They used to eat with their hats on, but I always took mine off.”

“I should think you would,” exclaimed indignant Judith.

Joe put his cheek down upon Doodles’ head, smoothing the sleeping head with his brown cheek.

“What is the dog’s name?” he inquired.

“Doodles,” answered Judith, hastening to speak to the rude, strange boy who had traveled from an unknown country.

“O, Doodles, Doodles, Doodles,” whispered Joe, in a fond voice, rubbing his cheek on the soft head.

“Well, Joe, do you love cows as well as dogs?” inquired Mr. Brush.

“Yes,” said Joe, thinking of the cow that was missing him to-night. He hoped she was asleep now. “But I’m glad I found Doodles.”

“Now, Joe, drop Doodles,” said Aunt Affy, “and follow me up these kitchen stairs. I have a room ready for an obedient, truthful, industrious boy.”

“Now, Joe, drop Doodles,” said Aunt Affy,
“and follow me up these kitchen stairs.”

“Where is he?” asked Joe, lifting his shaggy head.

They all laughed, and laughing, also, Joe followed the plump, sweet-faced lady up the kitchen stairs.

IX. THE FLOWERS THAT CAME TO THE WELL.

“He might have made the earth bring forth

Enough for great and small,

The oak tree and the cedar tree,

And not a flower at all.”

—Mary Howitt.

Nettie Evans sat in her invalid chair leaning forward with her chin on the window-sill looking down into her father’s untidy back yard.

The only pleasant thing in it was a lilac bush that was a marvel of beauty when it was in bloom, but that had faded many weary days ago, leaving ugly brown bunches where the lilacs had been; there were two well-worn paths, one leading to the kitchen door, and the other to the well, and nothing besides, excepting weeds with a background of apple orchard. If Nettie had raised her eyes she would have seen woods, and hills and fields of grain, a bit of road, a wooden bridge, and a deep blue sky full of puffy, white clouds, but she would not raise her eyes; when her back ached as it did to-day she never saw anything but the weeds in the yard, especially those tall rag-weeds growing close around the well. Her father had promised to “clear up” the yard after planting, but planting had come and gone, and he was still too busy.

“Oh, if I were only able to pull weeds,” she sighed.

It was a very gentle sigh, she was not strong enough to sigh heavily. Three years ago she could shout and run, to-day she could not move her feet, and there were many days during the year when she must lie still in bed.

In winter, she had a south room, at the front of house, where she saw the rising and the setting sun, and had a good view of all the people who passed back and forth from the village; in summer, she had this cool north room that looked out on the back yard.

The back yard was full of interest to her—when she could forget the weeds. Twenty times a day her mother came to the kitchen door to look up at her, and tell her how the work was going on; she knew what was cooking by the odors that came up to her and what all the noises meant, from the click of the egg-beater to the thud of the churn-dasher, and she saw old Mrs. Finch when she came to borrow baking powder, and the pedlars, and book-agents, and apple-tree men; but best of all she liked to watch for her father to come in to dinner and supper.

In blue flannel shirt and big straw hat, tired and dusty and warm, he never failed to look up and call: “Why, hello, you there, daughter?” just as if she were well, and had only run up stairs for a moment. And her weak, “I’m here, father,” made the sadness and the happiness of his life.

Nettie moved her head slightly, and gained a view of the pasture where three cows were feeding; she could not see the brook, but she knew that it ran through the pasture, and she knew there were blue lilies all along the brook, some of them growing in the water.

How she longed to see those lilies growing in the water!

She was only ten years old the last time she saw those lilies: she was driving home the cows at night, in her pink calico dress and stout leather shoes, with her father’s old straw hat on the back of her head, “a picture of a happy, healthy, country lassie,” her father thought as he watched her standing by the clump of lilies while she waited for the cows to drink. She was thinking she would gather a big bunch of the lilies as soon as they were opened the next morning—but the pet calf came behind her and butted her down, and her father carried home in his arms a helpless little daughter. And there were tiger lilies in bloom; she could not see the place where they were growing, but it was only a quarter of a mile away in a fence corner, such a patch of them! Oh, how she longed to see those tiger lilies growing! The last time she saw the tiger lilies was the Sunday before she said good-bye to the blue lilies—she was walking home alone from Sunday-school in white dress and blue ribbons, and brown kid shoes, and when she came to the fence corner with the great clump of tiger lilies, she thought of picking a large bunch of them, but just then she heard a noise behind her, and turning, saw a neighbor’s three little black and white pigs; they had followed her all the way from the corner, and it was so funny to think how she had walked along unconsciously, with those pigs in single file behind her, that she just stood and laughed, and then she clapped her hands at them and chased them back, and forgot all about the tiger lilies.

“Oh, blue lilies, oh, tiger lilies, I’ll never see you growing any more,” she sighed.

“Why, hello, daughter, you up there?” called the voice below her.

Nettie did not answer; she felt too discouraged to speak, but she looked down and tried to smile at her father.

Her father looked just as usual, only he had a scythe over his shoulder.

“I came in a little earlier to cut down your weeds,” he called cheerily.

Nettie watched him as he swung the scythe, and listened to the swish, swish, as the tall weeds fell; when the weeds around the well grew less she caught a glimpse of something blue, and then of something red; she pulled herself up to the window, and leaned out, and then she shrieked:—

“Father, don’t cut down the lilies!”

There they were, blue lilies and tiger lilies, growing together, close by the well!

“How did they get there, father?” she called.

“They must have been in the sod that I put around the well last fall,” he replied; “I remember now that I got it from two different places. If I had cut down the weeds before the lilies bloomed, I shouldn’t have known they were there, and should have cut them all down together.”

Nettie fell back in her chair with a sigh of delight, watching her father while with his hands he pulled all the weeds away from the lilies.

“Mother,” she called, lifting herself forward, and resting her chin again on the window-sill.

“Well, Deary,” came in a quick voice from the shed, and her mother appeared in the shed doorway with the dish of boiled potatoes she held in her hand when Nettie’s voice reached her.

“Mother, will you ask Judith to stop and see my lilies the next time she goes past?”

“Your lilies, child?”

“Yes, my own lilies, there by the well. They came and grew just for me.”

Mrs. Evans gave a glance toward the well, then hastened to set the potato dish on the dinner table.

“Of all things! And how she has wanted to see lilies grow! The blessed child is watched over and done for as her father and I can’t do. I declare,” in a shame-faced way, all to herself, “when such things happen I wish I was a Christian.”

“Mother, mother,” called the happy voice again; “I want Joe to see my lilies too.”

“Yes, Deary,” promised her mother from within the shed.

X. THE LAST APPLE.

“God loves not only a cheerful giver, but a cheerful

worker as well.”

—Fletcher Reade.

That afternoon as Nettie was slowly rousing herself from her afternoon nap in her chair, she heard a low, joyful exclamation under her windows.

“Oh, lovely. Mrs. Evans, it’s like—a poem.”

Then a light flashed over the pale face, and Nettie lifted herself forward to look, and to speak.

“O, Judith, I wanted you to see them. You do love pretty things so.”

Judith came through the shed, and up the narrow rag-carpeted stairs to the open door of Nettie’s chamber.

“I wish you would write a poem for me.”

Nettie Evans was Judith’s “public,” and a most enthusiastic one; the young author looked very grave one day when Nettie told her that she liked her poems better than the ones she read to her from the Longfellow book.

“I have brought a poem for you; no one has seen it yet; I’ve copied it to send to my Cousin Don; you know he’s in Switzerland, climbing mountains, and having splendid times. It happened one Thanksgiving—I was here in the country, you remember, with my mother. I saw one rosy apple left on the top of a tree, and I felt so sorry for it. One day I thought of it again, and I wrote this.”

Judith drew her chair close to Nettie’s and took the folded sheet of note paper from her pocket.

“Oh, I wish I could make poems and sew carpet rags,” moaned Nettie.

Judith dared not say she wished she might, she dared not pity her, or look at her; she unfolded her poem and began to read:—

THE LAST APPLE.

I am a rosy-cheeked apple,

Left all alone on the tree,

And in the cold wind I am sighing,

‘Oh, what will become of me.’

Nettie nodded approval, and the poet read modestly on:—

They’ve picked my sisters and cousins,

But I was too little to see;

Now, they will be eaten at Christmas,

But nothing will happen to me.

The beets are pulled, and the parsnips

Are cosily left in the ground—

When the farmer counts up his produce,

No record of me will be found.

I was as pretty a blossom

As ever gave sweets to a bee;

But ’mong the good things for winter,

No one will be thankful for me.

There’s place for radish and carrot,

Though common as common can be,

And I wonder, wonder, wonder,

Why I was left on the tree.

Oh, here comes poor little Sadie,

With her face all wet with tears;

A face so pale and hardened,

But not with the lapse of years.

Now, fly to my aid, dear cold wind,

And receive my last command,—

With a twist, and turn and flutter,

Just drop me into her hand.

In Nettie’s radiant face and tear-filled eyes Judith found the appreciation for which her soul thirsted.

“That’s lovely,” exclaimed Nettie, “may I keep it and learn it?”

“Of course you may. I’ll copy it for you.”

“And I’ll say it in the night if I cannot go to sleep. How much I’ve had in one day. The lilies and the red apple. Don’t you believe that if you can’t go out and get things they always come?”

“But part of the fun is going out to get them,” said Judith, and then, in quick penitence, “but it must be so lovely to have them come to you.”

“Agnes Trembly came yesterday to make me a new blue wrapper; I like to have her sew here with me. Her mother is blind and that is harder than my lot. Agnes said she wished she was a queen. But I never thought of that.”

“Now I’ll tell you a story. There is a little girl somewhere who is a queen, and sometimes she has to sit in state and receive people, and do other queenly things. One day when she was playing with her dolls, what do you think she said?”

“What?” asked Nettie, her face beaming.

“If you are naughty again, I will make you a queen.”

Nettie laughed to the story-teller’s content.

“Now, I’ll tell you a chicken story. This happened to me. Aunt Rody often lets me help her feed the chickens. We had a brood of little chickens, and all died but two of them; I don’t know why, I took good care of them. One morning I found the mother dead. And what do you think?—those two poor motherless little sisters cuddled under their dead mother’s wing. I would like to write a poem about that, only it breaks my heart, and I like to write about happy things. The next day one of them died, and the left one hadn’t any chicken companion. And then, what do you think? A hen mother who had only one chicken, deserted that and went to roost; and this one little black chicken tried to make friends with the sisterless little white chicken. It was too pretty to watch them. The one whose mother deserted went into her little coop and called and called to the other one; but the white chicken didn’t understand at first; when she did understand, the black chicken made it so plain, and she ran to the coop, and the little black chicken and the little white chicken cuddled together as loving and happy as could be.”

“You can put that into a poem,” suggested Nettie, her eyes alight with Judith’s presence and stories.

“Nettie,” said Judith, impulsively, “I love to have you to tell things to.”

XI. HOW JEAN HAD AN OUTING.

“Is it warm in that green valley,

Vale of Childhood, where you dwell?

Is it calm in that green valley,

Round whose bourns such great hills swell?

Are there giants in the valley,

Giants leaving foot-prints yet?

Are there angels in the valley?

Tell me—I forget.”

—Jean Ingelow.

Jean had been crying; in fact, she was crying now, but the tears were stopped on their way down her cheeks by the rush of her new thought. She was always having new thoughts; but this was the most splendid new thought she had ever had in her fourteen years of life.

“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed aloud, springing to her feet. “I’ll just do it, and nobody will know but myself. I’ll go away to a new place and stay two weeks.”

In her delight she clapped her hands and whirled about the room. It was such a small room to clap your hands and whirl about in. That was the cause of her tears—that small room; that and the house, the farm, and everything she had to do—and doing the same disagreeable things every day, and never going anywhere.

School closed yesterday; and this morning Sophie Elting, her best friend, had gone away, for an outing she called it, with a little city air she had caught from her cousins. She was going to the sea-shore to be gone two weeks.

“I’ll play go,” cried Jean, “and I’ll stay at home and do all the things here that people do when they go on an outing.”

The first thing was to pack up. Sophie had a new trunk, and had shown her all her pretty things packed snugly in it: cologne, a box of paper, new handkerchiefs, and ever so many things to go on an outing with. How could Jean play she had things which she hadn’t? And she had no trunk. She would “pack” in a shawl-strap.

She put in her Sunday dress, her morning gingham, two white aprons, her Bible and tooth-brush. She had ever so many things to take on an outing. In half an hour her shawl-strap was packed. She looked down at it with a sigh of relief and pleasure. Now she had started.

“Jean,” came up the stairway, “do you want to go to town?”

Of course she did! The coming back would be “getting there.” She was going into the country for two weeks to board. The boarding was a part of it. She had never boarded in her life; she would be a summer boarder at Daisy Farm.

“There’s the butter to take,” the voice at the foot of the stairs went on, “and you may as well get your shoes, and I’ll give you twenty-five cents to spend as you like.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried Jean, delightedly. That would buy a box of paper and envelopes, and she had twenty cents for stamps. She could not think of another thing she wanted.

At six o’clock that afternoon, when Jean drove back into the yard with her father, she had two packages, her shoes and the box of paper. She had not been her usual talkative self on the way home. This gentleman sitting beside her was the farmer to whose house she was going. He had met her at the train. She was looking about the country and admiring things; she found seven things to admire which she had never noticed before. At the tea-table she intended to talk about them—“rave,” as the summer boarders did.

She went up to her little room and gravely unpacked her shawl-strap, putting the things into the drawers and the closet.

Her sister Lottie was setting the tea-table,—not in her play, but in sober reality,—and it was Minnie’s turn to milk to-night. The four sisters shared the housework with their mother; Jean was number three. Pet, eleven years old, was the youngest.

“I must take a great interest in everybody,” Jean said to herself. “Boarders always do. I must try to do good to somebody, as Mrs. Lane helped me last summer.”

At the supper-table she began to talk about the beautiful five-mile drive from town, and the sunset from the top of the hill.

“It is pretty,” said Minnie.

“And the bridge with the willows. It is pretty enough for a picture; and the ducks sailing down the stream.”

“I always said we had pretty things near home,” remarked her father.

Then Lottie found a nook in the woods to talk about, and Pet told of a place like a cave, and the view on the top after you climbed the big rock. The tired mother brightened. After supper Jean followed her father out the back door and stood beside him.

“How is the watermelon patch doing?” she asked, in a voice of great interest, after thinking a minute.

“Finely! Never so well before. Come and look at it.”

It was a pleasant walk. Jean imagined that she had a white shawl thrown about her, and once in a while gave it a twitch as she listened while the farmer talked about his melons. She asked questions she had never thought of asking before, and learned several new things about the farm.

“It’s a good thing to be a good farmer,” she said. “I never thought before how much farmers had to know.” Her father looked pleased.

It was Jean’s work to wash the milk-pails and milk-pans. She did it that night with a sense of enjoyment which she had never had before, for she was simply “helping” of her own accord. She would be very helpful; she would try to make these strangers care very much for her. She would watch every day to see what she could do for them. Mrs. Lane last summer had taught the class in the Sunday-school to which Jean belonged, and had said that “all must try to be a blessing to every one whom their life touched.” It appeared to Jean that her life touched everybody’s in this house.

Sunday was a wonderful day. She listened to the new preacher, and the new Sunday-school was certainly very pleasant. She spoke to a little girl she had never noticed before, and gave a rose to Julia Weed, whom she had always disliked. She was trying to be like Mrs. Lane.

In the evening she stayed at home from church with her mother, because her mother’s head ached; and when, for the first time in her life, she proposed reading her Sunday-school book to her mother, she was both pleased and rebuked to hear her reply, “Oh yes, I should like it! I can’t read evenings, and I often think how interesting your books look.”

“And if I can’t finish it to-night, may I read tomorrow night?” Jean asked eagerly.

“If I am not too tired.”

“But it will rest you.”

“Perhaps so. It will be something new.”

Something new for her to be thoughtful about her own hard-working mother! And she had to imagine herself in somebody else’s home to think of it.

What a day Monday was! She was busy all the morning, “helping,” and she found it good fun. In the afternoon she wrote a long letter to Sophie, and she had so much to tell that she filled three sheets. In the evening she read aloud to her mother, and her father listened, after he read his paper, and said it was a “jolly good book.”

When she left the room to go to bed, she said, “Good night!” Usually she forgot it. She was careful to remember “thank you,” and “please.”

It was not her turn to iron. To-morrow would be a long, hot ironing day, and there were so many starched things this week. Lottie was in a hurry to finish the pink muslin she was making for herself. If she should offer to iron two hours, and let Lottie sew—but how she hated to iron!

Still, she could only stay with these people two weeks—and there was nothing else Lottie would like so much; she and Lottie had not been very good friends lately, and this would “make up.” She was the one to make up, for she had been cross and had refused to do her work in order to let Lottie go to the picnic. Minnie did it, and let Lottie go, and Jean had felt mean ever since.

But she was only fourteen, and it was vacation. But Mrs. Lane said—and now she wished she hadn’t!—that nobody ever had a vacation from doing kind things.

She could help iron next week. This was her week.

“I guess it’s God’s week!” This was one of Jean’s new thoughts. Going into your own home like a new somebody was very hard work; she almost wished she were not a summer boarder, that she had stayed at home! And this last thought was so funny that the people down-stairs heard her laughing.

“Jean is a happy child,” said her mother.

“Yes, she seems to have a new kink,” replied her father. “She is taking a sudden interest in everything. I used to think she hated the farm and everything about it. The farm is all I’ve got to give my girls, and it hurts me to have them care nothing about it.”

“It’s vacation, and she’s more rested,” said Minnie. “She loves books better than any of us, and studies harder.”

“I don’t know what the secret is, but I’m glad of it,” her father replied.

With a brave heart the next morning Jean asked Lottie if she might iron two hours and let her sew on her pink muslin.

“You blessed child!” cried Lottie. “I had thought I must sit up all night to get it done for tomorrow. Two hours will be a great lift.”

Ironing was hot and hard work, beside being extremely unpleasant work to Jean; but she pushed the two hours into three, and never was so happy in her life as when her oldest sister gave her an unaccustomed kiss, which was even better than her words: “I won’t forget this, Jeanie.”

Wednesday morning Jean remembered that, as a stranger, she must learn something about the village and the village people. Bensalem was a pretty village with one long street, two churches, one store, a post-office, and an old school-house. She had another thought to-day; this, too, grew out of something Mrs. Lane said at Sunday-school. “Bind something, if you can; make some good thing fast, like forming a little society.”

How she would like to do that! She counted over the girls she liked best. There were nine, and ten would form a society, bound fast together. This she regarded as a very promising new thought. But what should it be for? Jean pondered a great deal, but she could think of nothing but her “outing.”

Her outing! Why shouldn’t it be an Outing Society—not to get up real vacations for people, but to get them out of themselves, and into the way of helping things along, and beginning right at home. For that was the curious part of it—that you didn’t have to go away anywhere. It seemed to come to you.

Jean resolved to call on the girls and tell them about it, and ask them to come to her house and talk it over. She knew now what she would call it: The Outing Ten.

First she would call at the Parsonage and tell Miss Marion about it, and ask her what to do first and next.

But she could not tell Miss Marion about it all herself; perhaps Judith Mackenzie would go; Judith knew Miss Marion better than any of the girls. She was always staying at the Parsonage “for company” for Miss Marion.

XII. A SECRET ERRAND.

“Say not ‘small event’! Why ‘small’?

Costs it more pain than this, ye call

A ‘great event,’ should come to pass,

Than that? Untwine me from the mass

Of deeds which make up life, one deed

Power shall fall short in or exceed!”

—Robert Browning.

On the lounge in the sitting-room, Judith lay cuddled up with a rare ailment for her, a throbbing headache; Aunt Affy had brought a pillow from her own entry bedroom, and bathed her forehead with Florida water; then brushed her hair for a long time and told her a story about her far-away girlhood, “when Becky and Cephas and I had our good times. Not that we don’t have good times now; Becky has hers up yonder, and poor Cephas and I do the best we can for each other down here.”

Judith wondered why she should say “poor Cephas”; he had laughing eyes, and a merry laugh, and everything that happened to him seemed just the very best thing that could happen.

Aunt Rody had brewed a bowl of bitter stuff and stood threateningly near while Judith lifted her dizzy head and forced herself to taste it.

“More,” urged Aunt Rody.

She tasted again.

“More,” insisted Aunt Rody.

She tasted several times with a look of pitiful appeal that Aunt Rody resisted.

“More,” commanded Aunt Rody.

“I can’t,” sobbed Judith, but she obeyed, and Aunt Rody set the yellow bowl on a chair by the sofa, that she might taste it whenever she felt like it.

Homesick Judith hid her face in the small pillow as soon as she was left alone, and cried; she cried for her mother not a year dead, for her father whom she scarcely remembered, for the pretty room she had with her mother in her own city home, for her picture of the Madonna with the child, that Aunt Rody declared popish and would not suffer, even in Judith’s own room; then she cried because Miss Kenney had not come yesterday, as she half promised, and then because Aunt Rody had made Cephas say that she should not run about in the fields with him, but stay in the house these wonderful days and sew carpet rags; and then, if she cried about anything she cried in her sleep; a soft step was in the room, the lightest touch covered her with Aunt Affy’s fleecy white shawl.

“Sit down,” whispered Aunt Affy’s voice, “she is fast asleep; she is a good sleeper, we shall not disturb her; I shouldn’t wonder if she had fits of home-sickness; she never tells; we are all old folks; Rody thinks she doesn’t need any more schooling because she can do sums and writes such a handsome hand, so she doesn’t go to school—and doesn’t know many young folks. Rody never did understand young folks, you know that.”

“I should think you knew that,” replied the other whispering, indignant voice. “So Cephas is back again; he was gone five years, wasn’t he?”

“Five this last time, three the other time.”

Judith stirred, pushed the white wool away from her face, and listened.

“He was good to go,” replied the still indignant voice.

Judith made a soft rustle; Aunt Affy did not heed it.

“Yes, he was good,” assented Aunt Affy’s sweet, old voice, “he is always ready to do the thing that’s happiest for me. He was so homesick and wrote such heart-rending letters that I couldn’t stand it. Rody sniffed, as she has always sniffed at us, but she said he might come back if we were both so set on it, so shamelessly set on it.”

Judith’s little protesting groan was not noticed; then she shut her eyes and listened, because she could not help it.

“It’s a burning shame, and the sister you have been to her, too. You took your money and bought your sisters out that you might keep the old place for Rody.”

“I wanted it for myself, too,” was Aunt Affy’s honest reply.

“But you could have taken your money and married Cephas—”

“But, you see, she never could bear the thought of my marrying at all; she doesn’t dislike Cephas so much, but she wants me all to herself. She doesn’t like men, I’ll allow that; she never had any kind of happy experience herself, unless it happened before I was born, and she doesn’t know. After Becky died, Cephas and I had to comfort each other; Rody never was a great hand at comforting, and the other girls were all dead or married. She had been a mother to me all my life; I was a two week’s old baby left in her care; and Becky was only two years old; we were her two babies.”

“You had whippings and scoldings enough thrown in, I’ll be bound,” was the visitor’s tart rejoinder.

“The scoldings are thrown in now,” said Aunt Affy, with the glimmer of a smile; “I am only a girl to her; I shall never grow up to her; not old enough to be married, sixty years old as I am. Cephas told her yesterday that he would fix up the old house with his own money, he has considerable laid by, and she dared him to pull off a shingle or drive a nail. He said she should always be the head of the house, and she said there was no need for him to tell her that. You see that we could not be happy in making her old age unhappy. She is so old that defiance might kill her; she is eighty-four.”

“I’d let it kill her then,” said Miss Affy’s life-long friend.

“No, you wouldn’t. Your sister is your sister, and she is all the mother I ever knew. Cephas and I jog on together like two old married folks. She says we will be glad when she is under the sod and we can have our own way.”

“She might let you have it now, and then you wouldn’t be glad,” urged Jean Draper’s mother.

“She cannot let us have it; her own will is too strong for her; when she gives up to us she will die.”

“Then I’d do it anyway,” counselled the other voice.

“We did talk of that, but we are afraid to—she is so old,” whispered Aunt Affy, feeling faint with the very thought of it.

“Well, it’s an old folks’ romance, and I didn’t know old folks had any,” said the woman who was married at sixteen.

But the girl on the lounge with her face in the pillow had listened; she had listened and learned something Aunt Affy would not have told her for the world.

How could she ever look into Aunt Affy’s face again? And, oh, how could she ever love Aunt Rody?

She groaned, and Aunt Affy came to her and asked if she felt worse. The neighbor went out on tiptoe; Aunt Rody came from the kitchen to stand threateningly near while Aunt Affy coaxed mouthful by mouthful the draining of the bitter bowl.

While Aunt Rody was taking her nap that afternoon Jean Draper knocked on the open kitchen door. Judith and Aunt Affy were washing dishes together at the kitchen sink; Judith gave a cry of pleased surprise at the sound of the knock and the vision of the girl in the doorway.

“O, Jean, I wished for you,” she said, with the longing for young companionship in her heart.

“And I wanted you. I am going to see Miss Marion on a secret errand, and I can’t do it without you. Can you spare her, Miss Affy?”

“If her head will let her go,” began Miss Affy, doubtfully.

“Oh, that’s well,” cried Judith, joyfully, “but what will Aunt Rody say?” she questioned in dismay.

“I will take care of that,” promised Aunt Affy, anticipating with dread the half hour’s scolding the permission would bring upon herself.

“You are making her a gad-about just like yourself,” the monologue would begin.

“Are you sure, Aunt Affy, dear?” asked Judith, anxiously.

“Yes, sure. Run away and put on your new gingham.”

XIII. THE TWO BLESSED THINGS.

“In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and

He shall direct thy paths.”

—Prov. iii. 6.

“How excellent a thought to me

Thy loving-kindness then shall be!

Thus in the shadow of Thy wings

I’ll hide me from all troublous things.”

“My life is like Africa; there are no paths anywhere,” said Marion. She was not petulant; the tone was not petulant; Marion knew she thought she was bearing her life bravely. The study was cool and darkened that August afternoon; she lay idly upon the lounge, a fresh magazine in her lap, and a pile of books on the carpet within reach of her idle hands.

A year ago she thought she loved books—and music, and life.

Roger liked to have her near him while he wrote and studied, but he did not like her idle moods. This latest one had lasted two days.

He pushed his large volume away, and taking up an ivory paper cutter began to run its sharp edges across his fingers. Marion was easily hurt; he could not advise work as he did yesterday.

“If your life were like Africa,” he began in an unsuggestive tone, “you would have a beaten track wherever you turned; no unmapped country in the world is better supplied with paths than this same Africa that your hedged-in life is like. Every village is connected with some other village by a path; you can follow ziz-zag paths from Zanzibar to the Atlantic; they are beaten as hard as adamant; they are made by centuries of native traffic.”

“I have learned something about Africa,” she answered, demurely, “if not about my life.”

“Which are you the more interested in?”

“Oh, Africa, just now. I am not interested in my life at all.”

“Marion, dear, is Bensalem a failure?”

“Yes, as far as I am concerned. Not for you, dear old boy; it is splendid for you, and for Bensalem. Even Judith listens in church.”

“I know she does. I write my sermons for her.”

“For a girl? How do you expect to reach other people, then?” she inquired, surprised.

“The inspiration came to me, that Sunday she told me she was sorry for not listening, to begin all over again—to look at life from a fresh standpoint, from the standpoint of youth, ardent, hungry, sensation-loving youth—”

“Sensation—”

“Not in its usual acceptation; truth cannot but give you a sensation; I knew it would not hurt the old people and the middle-aged to begin again; to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child, and I have attempted to teach the children in the Kingdom of Heaven; to talk simply about the grand old truths; to keep that girl before me as I thought out my sermons—a thoughtful girl who has had some experience in life, and when a thought or the expression of it was over her head, I struck it out.”

“Now I know your secret. ‘Simplicity and strength’ are your characteristics, David Prince, our literary blacksmith, who wrote Bensalem up for the Dunellen News, was pleased to say. Shall you keep this up?”

“Until I find a better way,” he said, contentedly.

“Everybody listens.”

“Even Miss Rody,” he said, smiling at the memory of Miss Rody’s face.

“And all the other old folks. Old folks and children. What about the young men and maidens?”

“Aren’t ‘simplicity and strength’ good enough for them?” he inquired, seriously.

“It’s good enough for me.”

“Not quite,” he answered.

“Why?”

“You listen, of course.”

“But I do not grow fast enough? Roger, I’ve stopped growing. I knew something was the matter with me, and that’s it.”

“A pretty serious it.”

“I know that better than you can tell me. I wish Judith Grey Mackenzie—how Aunt Rody brings that out—would give me an inspiration.”

“Bring her here for a week and I’ll promise that she will.”

“Aunt Affy could not spare her. Her yellow head is the sunshine of that old house. But I’ll have her some day. I wish I owned her.”

“I wish you did. I would buy her myself if I had money enough.”

“I wonder who does own her,” said Marion; “I forgot that she does not belong to anybody.”

“She does belong to somebody. Her mother gave her to Aunt Affy.”

Perhaps she belonged somewhat to her “Cousin Don.”

Roger never talked about Don. He never read aloud to her the foreign letters she saw so often on the study table.

A sigh came of itself before she could stifle it; the idle fingers opened the magazine; Roger’s pen began to race across the paper. Voices on the piazza brought Marion to her feet; Judith’s voice was in the hall.

“O, Miss Marion, we came to tell you—” began Judith.

“And to ask you how—” continued Jean.

“To make an Outing Ten,” finished Judith.

At the tea-table Marion told Roger the story of how Jean had an outing.

“I wish you might have heard the unconscious way she told it. My life is like Africa: all beaten tracks. I am to be the President of the Outing Ten. All Bensalem is to be my own special private outing, but nobody is to know it.”

“Then, Marion dear, you will have the two most blessed things on the earth.”

“What are they?”

“Don’t you know?”

“You think work is one,” she said doubtfully.

“So you think. And companionship is the other.”

“Roger, dear, I’m afraid I haven’t given you companionship; I’ve been stupid, self-absorbed, idle—”

“Anything else?”

“But you have been desolate, sometimes.”

“My work has been my companionship.”

“Then there is only one blessed thing to you,” she said, merrily. “May you get it.”

“I am getting it every day.”

“Then you do not inwardly fret against the limitations of this bit of a village—” she began, frightened at herself for the suggestion: “I thought, perhaps, you were bearing Bensalem.”

“So I am, I hope,” he answered, gravely, “in my heart, and in my prayers.”

“I beg your pardon,” she returned, flushing under the “splendid purpose in his eyes.” “I might have known you were too broad to feel narrowed, as I do.”

“You remember what Lowell says: ‘There are few brains that would not be better for living for a while on their own fat.’”

“And that is better than the fat of the land—which you will never get in Bensalem.”

“I think I started from my new standpoint without worldly ambition. Think of Paul writing the Epistle to the Romans from a literary point of view.”

“Well, then,” with a laugh that was half a grumble, “I despair of you, if you ‘take pleasure’ as he did in all sorts of infirmities and limitations—I was beginning to be ambitious for you. You spent all the afternoon last week with Agnes Trembly’s mother, reading to her, and telling her stories—you do not take time to study as you used to study. You were such a student. Now all you care for is people—and the Bible,” she ran on, discontentedly; “What does Don think of you?” she asked, with a sudden flush.

“He is in despair,” he replied, thinking of Don’s latest letter of angry expostulation.

“He is ambitious,” said Marion, reproachfully.

“So am I,” he answered, smiling at the reproach.

“But in such a way. I like ambition. I would like to do something in the world myself.”

“The man, or woman, or child, who does the will of God is every day doing something in the world,” he said, seriously.

For a moment she was silenced, then urged by her own discontent she burst out:—

“But five hundred or a thousand people might as well listen to you, and be influenced by your ‘strength and simplicity,’ as this handful of Bensalem.”

“The perfect Teacher was more than once content with but one listener.”

“Yes; but his sermon was written and handed down to all the ages,” she answered, in a flash.

“If one life here in Bensalem is moved, and another life moved by that, who can tell how far down the ages the influence may go? Beside, that is not my care,” he said, in his rested voice.

“But wouldn’t you, now, candidly, rather influence ten hundred lives than one hundred?”

“Candidly, I would.”

“And, yet, you have refused a call to Maverick, and stay stupidly here.”

“Stupidly is your own interpretation. I will be content to move one man if I might choose the man. I am determined to learn what can be done in a village by one man who stays for the ‘fat of the land,’ the youth. From Drummond’s standpoint, only the boy himself and the young man understand the boy. My outlook just now is from the standpoint of that big-eyed, sensitive-lipped Joe, and your Judith. Men and women are but boys and girls grown tall. I find out the boy; you are helping me to the girl.”

“I am glad I can help,” said Marion, satisfied.

XIV. AN AFTERNOON WITH AN ADVENTURE IN IT.

“Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.”

—Luke xi. 4.

“Lord, Thou knowest all things: Thou knowest that I love Thee.”

—John xxi. 17.

It was rag-carpet afternoon; it was also another kind of an afternoon, an afternoon with an adventure in it, and Judith longed for adventures; but, of course, all she knew, at first, was the rag-carpet; the adventure was to happen in the kitchen, and the rag-carpet ball was happening in Aunt Affy’s room.

Judith was a working member of the Outing Ten, but if her outing meant this rag-carpet ball it was very discouraging, and if it were not for the pleasure of telling the President about the rag-carpet, she thought she would resign and become member of a ten that had more fun in it.

But then, Miss Marion was doing this kind of thing herself, things she did not like to do about the house, for she had sent away her servant and was doing all the work excepting washing and ironing, and, perhaps, in the village, too, she was doing uncongenial errands; but, of course, she would never tell the Outing Ten about that; she was going out to tea and making calls, as she had said she never would do when she came to Bensalem, and she was taking her music back and practicing hours every day, and reading solid books, instead of novels; she had let books and music go for a while, Judith had heard her say to Aunt Affy, and that Jean Draper’s outing had been the blessing of her life. It was Nettie’s blessing, too; she told Marion she had an “outing” every day; she was patching a quilt and studying history.

The history study was a part of Marion’s outing, but the Ten did not know that.

Aunt Affy, wearing a calico loose gown of lilac and white, was seated in a rocker at the window combing her long gray hair: her hair was soft and thick, she twisted it into a coil, and behind her each ear she brushed a long curl.

Judith liked to twist these curls around her fingers when she talked to Aunt Affy.

“Only a little more to do,” encouraged Aunt Affy, giving her coil a firm twist.

Sitting on the matting at Aunt Affy’s feet the little girl began her weary work again.

“Aunt Affy! How did you get your name?” she inquired with the eagerness of something new to talk about.

“How did you get yours?” asked Aunt Affy, seriously.

“But mine is a real name.”

“Isn’t mine?”

“I never heard it before.”

“Some people have never heard of Judith.”

“That is true. Nettie never had.”

“Mine is in the Bible. So is Rody’s.”

“Is it? Well, I’ve never read the Bible through.”

“I will show it to you.”

“Aunt Affy, you and Aunt Rody never look in the glass when you comb your hair. You sit anywhere. It’s very funny.”

“When you have combed your hair sixty and eighty years you will not need to look in the glass,” was the serious reply.

“It isn’t sixty,” said literal Judith. “You did not do it when you were a baby.”

Taking her New Testament in large type from the small table near her, Aunt Affy found the place and laid it on the arm of her chair; Judith lifted herself and read where Aunt Affy’s finger pointed: “And to our beloved Apphia—but that isn’t Affy,” said astonished Judith.

“It grew down to it when I was a girl, and has never grown up. Shall I find Rody?”

Again Aunt Affy found the place, and Judith read. “‘And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken named Rhoda.’ That’s very funny,” she said, settling down among her rags.

“There were eight of us girls, and we all had Bible names: Rody, Dark, that was Dorcas, Mary, Marthy, Deborah, that’s your mother’s mother, Hanner, it is really Hannah, Becky, and Affy the youngest, is eight. Rody and I only are left. They were all married but Rody and Becky and me. Cephas was engaged to poor Becky, and she died; he went away after that, went South, went West, and at last came here; I wrote to him to come and finish his days with me. Rody wasn’t exactly pleased.”

“Why?” asked Judith, excited over the old folks’ romance.

“She doesn’t like new happenings, and she never had liked Cephas.”

“She scolds him,” said Judith, with a feeling of sympathy.

“She scolds me. She scolds the minister. It is only her way of talking.”

At that moment Aunt Rody’s blue gingham sunbonnet appeared at the window; Judith’s nervous fingers worked hurriedly.

“Not done yet. Jean Draper is worth two of you. The graham bread is out of the oven, a perfect bake, and I am going to call on Mrs. Evans, and take Nettie a custard.”

“Well,” said Aunt Affy.

Aunt Rody’s hair was white, but if it were soft to the touch, Judith’s fingers would never know; her black eyes were deep set, she had not one tooth, and her wrinkled lips had a way of keeping themselves sternly shut, unless they were sternly opened.

“Joe is hunting eggs; I hope he won’t get into mischief while I’m gone.”

“He hasn’t yet,” said Judith, Joe’s champion.

Joe, with his closely cut black hair, his grateful eyes, new gray suit with navy blue flannel shirt, rough shoes, willing and efficient ways, and his great love for Doodles, was some one not at all out of place on the “Sparrow farm;” even dainty Judith did not altogether disapprove his presence at the table.

The small disciple’s forehead was all in a pucker, and the blue eyes were so filled with tears that there was not room enough in her eyes for them; one tear kept pushing another down over her cheeks; they even rolled over her lips and tasted salt.

“Have you noticed the name on my new darning yarn?” inquired Aunt Affy, replacing the New Testament on the table.

“Superior quality,” read Judith, taking the card from the basket Aunt Affy brought to her lap from the table.

“No; on the top.”

“Dorcas,” read Judith.

“Dorcas. Who is that for?”

“The name of the man who made it,” replied Judith, stopping her dawdling and threading her needle.

“I think not.”

“His little girl’s name, perhaps,” ventured Judith.

“It may be, for aught I know; but I do not think that is the name of the wool.”

“Then I don’t know,” said Judith, interestedly.

“I know something and I will tell you. A long, long, long time ago, there was a little girl; I think she learned to sew when she was a little girl, for she knew how to sew beautifully, and her work was strong and did not rip easily. Perhaps she began by doing disagreeable things and then went on to other things until she learned how to make coats and garments for children and grown-up people. Her name was Dorcas.”

“Did the man who made the wool into yarn know about her?” asked Judith.

“I think so. Almost everybody does.”

“I never heard of her before. Is that all?”

“No; that is only the beginning. She was a disciple. And disciples always love each other and work for each other.”

“Do they?” asked Judith, her face glowing. Why, that was splendid and easy.

“And she worked for widows and perhaps for their little children, and they loved her dearly. But she died, and oh, how they grieved! They sent for another disciple, Peter; they thought he could help them. His faith was so great that he kneeled down and prayed; then he spoke to her, and she opened her eyes, and looked at him, and then she sat up. And then he called the people she had made coats and garments for, and in great joy they had her back alive again. God was willing for her to come back to earth and go on with her beautiful work. He cares for the work of his disciples, even when it is only using thread and needle.”

Judith’s curly head drooped over her hated work; she was so ashamed of behaving “ugly”; she hoped she had not behaved quite as ugly as she felt.

The ball was the required size at last, and she joyfully took it up in the garret to the barrel that was only half filled.

Then, aimlessly, she wandered into the kitchen, and there, odorously, temptingly, under a clean, coarse towel, were the two loaves of warm graham bread; she thought she cared for nothing in the way of bread, cake, or pudding as much as she cared for fresh graham bread and butter.

And Aunt Rody never would put it on the table fresh. For a slice of this she must wait until tomorrow night.

Lifting the coarse towel she peeped, then she touched; another touch brought a crumb, such a delicious crumb; another, and another, and another delicious crumb, and the crust of one end of a loaf was all picked off.

“Oh, deary me!” cried Judith, in dismay.

Then she covered it carefully, standing spellbound.

What would Aunt Rody say to her?

What would Aunt Rody do to her?

Afraid to go away and leave the bread that would tell its own story, afraid to stay with it, for Aunt Rody’s sunbonnet and heavy step might appear at any moment, she went to the sink to pump water over her hands and to decide what to do next.

Joe was on his way to the barn and stables to gather eggs; Aunt Rody had made a law that she should not go into any of the outbuildings without permission,—without her permission; in summer time there were “so many machines and things around, and children had a way of stepping into the jaws of death.” She missed hunting the eggs.

The gate swung to, there was a step on the flagged path; with her hands dripping, she flew up the kitchen stairs; on the landing she waited, breathless, to hear what Aunt Rody would say.

The step was in the kitchen, there was a pause,—Aunt Rody must be uncovering the bread; a smothered exclamation, then a quick, angry voice: “That Joe! He’s always doing something underhanded. He’s too fond of eating; I will not say one word, but he shall not have any of this graham bread, or the next, if I can help it. When he asks for it I’ll tell him before all the table-full that he knows why.”

The awful sentence was delivered in an awful voice; tearful and trembling, the culprit up the stairway heard every word; it was her dreadful secret, her guilty secret; she no more dared to rush down the stairs and confess the theft than she dared—she could not think of any comparison.

She fled through the large, unfurnished chamber, known as the store-room, to her own room, and there, bolting the door, threw herself upon the bed and wept as she had never wept before; because she had never been so wicked and frightened before. Joe would be punished for her sin; she would not dare confess if Aunt Rody starved him to death.

“Judith, Judith, come out on the piazza,” called Aunt Affy.

She peeped in the glass: her eyes were red, and her hair was tumbled; the latter was nothing new, she could sit in the hammock with her eyes away from Aunt Affy.

As she stepped from the sitting-room door to the piazza, Joe rushed around the corner of the house, an egg in each hand, frightened and out of breath.

“There’s an earthquake—in the southern part of Africa—and I’ve been in it; and I’m afraid the house will go in; oh, what shall we do? Mr. Brush is up in the field—”

“Stand still, Joe, and get some breath to talk with, and then tell us what has happened to you,” said Aunt Affy, quietly. Joe dropped on the piazza floor, still carefully holding the eggs.

“Will the house rock and come down, do you think, Aunt Affy, as the houses did in the book Judith read?”

“How did you get all that earth on your clothes and tear your shirt-sleeve?” Judith inquired, forgetting her red eyes in the latest adventure.

“In the earthquake; I went in almost up to my neck, but I held on with one hand and didn’t break the eggs.”

“Where was the earthquake?” she asked.

“In the sheep pen. I was looking for eggs, and the first I knew I felt the ground sliding, and I was going down—there was water, for I heard it splash. I thought you said fire was inside the earth; I went down into water. And I caught hold of something with one hand because I had two eggs in the other, and I pulled, and pulled, and pulled myself up and out.”

“Why, Joe, you poor boy,” exclaimed Aunt Affy, in alarm, “that old cistern has caved in at last, and you’ve been in it; you might have been drowned. What a mercy that you are safe. Don’t you go near that sheep pen again until Mr. Brush says you may.”

“I’ll never go near it again—I’ve had enough of it. I couldn’t scream—I tried to, but nobody heard. Are you sure it won’t cave in again, and get here, and swallow up the house?”