Part 3

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.