Part 2

“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.