Part 8

“Several people who love you. If you had never thought of it, it would have been thought of for you. In that same talk Christ told the people: Your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of all these things: _for_ your heavenly Father knoweth; that’s why we do not have to think about the cubits. I think I’ll give Roger ‘_For_ your heavenly Father’ for a text.”

“I am so glad,” said Judith, with radiant eyes, “I love that ‘cubit’ now.”

“So do I. I will certainly ask Roger to preach about our cubit.”

“But don’t let him put me in,” protested Judith. “I should look conscious so everybody would know I was the girl. Jean Draper will be sure to know.”

“He will not let it be a girl. He will make it somebody who was superstitious, and anxious, and did not trust God, nor know how to learn his will. Trust Roger for that. I always know when he puts people in, for we talk it over together; he puts me in so often that I am accustomed to being made a text of; and his own mistakes and failures are in all the time.”

“I thought mine were,” acknowledged Roger’s attentive and appreciative listener.

“And Uncle Cephas is sure his are in,” laughed Marion. “I think it is only the outside of us that isn’t alike.”

Very often Judith was allowed to sit in the study with her books and writing.

Mr. Kenney told her that she never disturbed him, that he would be disturbed if she were not there with her books and table in the bay-window.

“Ask me a question whenever you like,” he said one day.

But her questions were kept for Miss Marion. The year went on to Judith in household work, in study, in church work and “growing up” with the village girls; Nettie Evans and Jean Draper were her chief friends. The year went on to Marion. June came; the new minister and his sister had been a year in Bensalem.

Marion told him that his sermons were growing up, because his boys and girls were growing up.

In this year Marion Kenney had discovered Aunt Affy.

She said to her one afternoon in the entry bedroom: “I was hungry to find you; I knew I wanted somebody. I knew you were in the world, because if you were not in the world, I should not be hungry for you.”

“‘If it were not so, I would have told you,’” said Aunt Affy, in the confident tone in which she always repeated the Lord’s own words.

Judith heard the words: the wonderful words, and in her fashion, made a commentary upon them: when things were not so, and couldn’t be so, God told you, so that you needn’t be too disappointed; he wouldn’t let you hope too long for things _and build on them_—that is, if you were not wilful about them. You might think just a little while about a thing, and not be silly about it, and if it were not so you would soon find out. She had found out about boarding-school—only she had been pretty bad about that all by herself, and did not deserve to have Miss Marion for a teacher.

_Was Miss Marion paid?_ She had never thought of it until this moment.

It was “rag carpet afternoon.” Judith coaxed Aunt Rody to allow her to take her half-finished ball and pile of rags up garret again, after Miss Marion came, but Aunt Rody sternly refused: “When I was a little girl I did my stent, company or no company. You can see Miss Kenney after you are through.”

“But I am so slow,” sighed the rag-carpet sewer.

“Be fast, then,” was the grim advice.

Judith and her carpet rags were on the floor of the entry between the two bed-rooms; Aunt Rody was sitting in her bed-room in a rocker combing her long gray hair; the door of Aunt Affy’s room opposite was open; Aunt Affy was seated in her rocker mending the sleeve of a coat for Cephas; Marion Kenney in her privileged fashion had come into the back yard and knocked at the open entry door.

Lifting her head, Judith saw her in the rush-bottomed chair; she had thrown her hat aside, her face was toward Aunt Affy.

Marion Kenney was Judith’s ideal; she was such a dainty maiden, with brown hair and brown eyes, the most bewitching ways, and so true.

It was happiness enough for Judith to sit or stand near her to watch and to listen; and, this afternoon, she had to sit in the entry far away from her and sew carpet rags.

“Aunt Rody,” called Marion across the hall, in an audacious voice, “may Judith bring her ball and rags in here?”

“Affy doesn’t want that room cluttered up,” was the slow, ungracious response.

“Oh, yes, I do,” said Aunt Affy, eagerly. “I like it cluttered up.”

“Go then, Judith,” was the severe permission; “you are all children together, I verily believe.”

With a merry “Thank you” Marion sprang to help gather the rags, and deposited them and Judith on the rag carpet between herself and Aunt Affy.

If it had not been for the rags and the ball that grew so tediously, there would have been nothing in the world for Judith to wish for.

“Aunt Affy, I brought a question to-day, as I always do,” began Marion, and Judith’s fingers stayed that she might hear the question and the answer.

She did not know how to ask Marion’s questions, but she did know how to understand something of Aunt Affy’s answers. In her spiritual and intellectual appreciation she was far ahead of anyone’s knowledge of her. She had a talent for receptivity and, girl as she was, for discipline.

“If you had read the Bible through forty times, as Aunt Affy has, you would know all the answers,” said Judith.

“Forty times,” repeated Marion, in amazement.

“I did not tell her; she found it out,” replied Aunt Affy, with humility; “I read my mother’s Bible, and Judith found dates and numbers in the back of it, so I had to tell her it was the number of times I had read it through.”

“You were as young as I when you began,” said Marion.

“I was twenty; I felt so alone somehow, that year, I yearned for it. I read it through in less than a year, then I began again, and next year again, now it is second nature; I should be lost without it.”

“What _is_ second nature?” asked the girl on the floor, among the carpet rags.

“It is something that is so much a part of yourself,—that comes after you have your first nature—that it is as much your nature as if you were born first so,” answered Aunt Affy with pauses for clearness. “You feel as if you were born the second time, and it would be as hard to get rid of as though you were born the first time with it.”

“Carpet rags will never be my second nature,” sighed Judith, picking up a long, red strip. “I wish reading the Bible would.”

“Aunt Affy, it is only this,” began Marion, again, flushing a little with the effort of bringing her secret into spoken words. “I want somebody to do good to; I have my class in Sunday school, and that is a great deal, but it doesn’t satisfy—and there must be somebody; if it were not so, I wouldn’t be so hungry to do it. I say it with all humility; I know there is something in me to give, and it is growing. But I don’t know how to find somebody.”

Judith’s fingers dropped the long, red strip; it would be a story to hear Aunt Affy tell Miss Marion how to find somebody.

“Then, you are just ready to hear my story.”

“I knew you had it; I saw it in your face.”

“It is one of the true stories, the stories as true as Bible stories, that you and I are living every day.”

How Judith’s face glowed. Was _she_ living a true story? As real as the Bible stories?

“God helps and hears now, as quickly, as willingly, as sufficiently, as he did in the old Bible times; we live in the new Bible times. I heard a woman once wishing for a _new_ Bible, the old Bible seemed written so long ago, and about people who lived so long ago. We are making a new Bible; our life is a new Acts of the Disciples.”

And she was in it? How could Judith think of carpet rags? Unless carpet rags were in it, too.

“I like that,” said Marion, “for Acts has been called the Gospel of the Risen Lord, and we know He _is_ risen, and with us in the Holy Spirit.”

Aunt Affy was silent a moment; like Judith her fingers stayed and would not work.

“Yes,” she said, too satisfied to say another word.

“Aunt Affy’s Bible is full of marks and dates,” said Judith, “as if she were writing her new Bible in her old one.”

“Now I’ll tell you how I found somebody. I wanted somebody to give to, as you do. I felt full of good things to give. The village was more full of young people then; now the boys go to the city, or away off somewhere, then they stayed and married village girls. There were people enough, but I did not know how to find the one willing to take something from me. So I prayed about it: my giving, and the somebody. The first thing I learned when I began to live in the Bible was to pray about everything as Bible folks did—I wanted to do all the right things they did, and shape my life as near to God as some of them did.”

Aunt Affy never talked as naturally as when talking to girls; she felt that step by step she had been over their ground. As Rody said, Affy had never grown up. A woman apart from the world, she lived a wide life; every day her clear vision swept from childhood to old womanhood.

“Before the answer came I read in the Old Testament (for all these things happened for our sakes, the New Testament tells us, throwing light on the old stories), three verses in the first chapter of Judges. How I studied it. And how much for myself I found in it—and for you. Joshua was dead; the children of Israel had no human counsellor, so ‘they asked the Lord.’ They knew he would speak to them as plainly as Joshua had. They had work to do, as you and I have; God’s own planned work. They asked who should go up first to the work; the Lord said: Judah. That was plain enough. As plain as he says to you: ‘Marion, do this.’”

“_How_ does he say it to me?”

“In two ways. First by giving you something to give. Then giving you the longing to find somebody, to give to.”

“Yes,” said Marion, in a full tone.

“With the permission he gave a promise.”

“I _like_ a promise to work on; I feel so sure,” said Marion, brightly.

“This promise was: Behold I have delivered the land into his hand. It is given to him, still he must go and get it; he must work and get it. God does not often put ready-made things into our hands; if he did we would not be co-workers.”

Judith understood. Aunt Affy would not have thought of telling these things to Judith.

“That is his way of working for us, working _in_ us. His work does not interfere with our work, only makes our work sure and strong. We speak the words; he keeps them from falling to the ground. Judah was the strongest tribe; he had been made ready for pioneer work; the first thing he did was to speak to Simeon, his brother, and say: Come with me. He found somebody to work with him. But he had to go first. He chose Simeon. We may choose somebody to work with us.”

“But, Aunt Affy, I meant somebody to work _for_,” replied Marion, who had a mission to somebody.

“There is nobody in the world to work _for_; it is always somebody to work with. We are all co-workers with God. The somebody you wish to find is a co-worker, too. Why not? Has God chosen only _you_ for His work?”

Marion looked ashamed; frightened at herself, and ashamed.

“How could I be so proud?”

“Oh, we all can,” said Aunt Affy, smiling. “And this brings me to my own story.”

“The new Bible,” said Judith, eagerly.

“One day I asked our Father to bring some one to me; my life has never been a going out, for Rody could never spare me, it has been a bringing in, instead; then I came in here and read about Judah and Simeon, and waited. The waiting is always a part of it.”

“Why?” asked Judith impatiently.

“Because God says so; that is the best reason I know. And my somebody came. Somebody to help in the work planned for both of us. And the happy thing about it (one of the happy things) was that the somebody started to come to me before I began to ask. Sometimes, people say things will happen if we don’t pray; perhaps they will, it is not for me to say they will not, but the happening will not be in _answer to prayer_, and that has a joyfulness of its own, that nobody knows except the One who answers and the one who prays. That is a joy too great to be told. Sometimes, I know that I have been as happy over an answered prayer as I _can_ be. And I can be very happy,” Aunt Affy said, with happy tears shining in her eyes.

“This somebody was not anybody new, or strange, or very far off; when I thought about it there was no surprise in it; it was somebody who had been coming to meet me a long while—in preparation. Then, we were ready to be co-workers in a very simple way, making no stir, but I trust our work together will not prove hay or stubble in the last day. It was somebody I chose myself; we do a great deal of our own choosing. But it was God’s work and God’s workers, like Judah and Simeon. There was prayer first, and Judah using his knowledge and judgment. No wonder God could keep his promise; they helped him keep his promise, as you and I do. Do you remember what Andrew did after Jesus called him and asked him to spend that day with him? ‘_He first findeth his own brother._’”

“My only brother _is_ found,” said Marion. “Now some one else may be ‘first.’”

“And I haven’t any,” said listening Judith. “But I have my cousin Don; I wonder about him.”

“We each have our own; whoever we find is our own. This is our own world,” Aunt Affy replied in her happy voice.

Marion’s question was answered. Aunt Affy always understood what was surging underneath her restless, foamy current of talk.

Since she had known Aunt Affy she had grown quieter; she had come to Bensalem “in a fume,” she told Aunt Affy, and the air, or “something,” was making things look different.

Aunt Affy smiled her wise, sweet smile; she knew the time came to girls when things had to “look different.”

XVII. THE STORY OF A KEY.

“What time I am afraid, I will Trust in Thee.”

Aunt Rody had a way of bringing her work and sitting somewhere near when Marion came; the girl’s vivacity, and gossip of village folks, gossip in its heavenliest sense, attracted the hard-visaged, hard-handed, sharp-tongued old woman.

An afternoon with Marion Kenney was to the old woman, who never read stories, what a volume of short stories is to other people; stories, humorous, pathetic, and always with a touch of the best in life. And, somehow, the best found an answering chord in something in Aunt Rody.

But for that something nobody could have lived in the house with Aunt Rody.

The door across the hall was open; all was quiet within the small bedroom.

For the world Aunt Rody would not acknowledge any weakness by bringing her chair into Affy’s room, or even into the entry. She was not fond of company; and all Bensalem knew it. Cephas asked her years ago if she wanted to be buried in a corner of the graveyard all by herself and the brambles.

“Heaven is a sociable place, Rody, and you might as well get used to it.”

Aunt Affy’s story was done, there was no sound in the other bedroom; Judith picked among her colored strips.

“I had a letter from my cousin Don last night, Miss Marion,” said Judith, “and he said he was glad I loved the parsonage.”

“Did he?” asked Marion, twisting one of Judith’s curls about her finger.

“O, Judith, I know you want me to tell you a story,” she said hastily, as Aunt Affy slipped on her glasses again and took the coat sleeve into her hand. To Marion that coat sleeve was a part of Aunt Affy’s “new Bible.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Judith, with pure delight.

“Judith would have enjoyed the age of tradition,” said Aunt Affy; “just think,” in her voice of young enthusiasm, “instead of reading it, what it would be to hear from Andrew’s own lips the story of that day.”

“We are living there now,” said Marion; “I am. The title of my life just now is ‘The Parsonage story of Village Life.’ But the story I want to tell Judith to-day is an episode in my own life. Seven years ago. I haven’t even told Roger yet, and I tell him everything. I think I never told any one before. I used to be at the head of things in those days; father was often away, and the children were all younger, except Roger, and mother wasn’t strong. We lived in an old house in a broad city street, away back, with a box-bordered yard in front, and lilacs, and old-fashioned things behind; we were all born there, even Roger, the eldest, and our only moving times was in the spring and fall cleaning. Once a friend of mine moved, and I was enough in the moving times to be there at an impromptu dinner; we stood around a pine table in the kitchen, or sat on anything we could find, a firkin, or peach basket turned upside down, and they let me eat a piece of pie in my fingers. All I wanted was to do something just like it myself. And when mother said I might stay all my birthday week and help Aunt Bessie move, I thought my ship had come in, laden with moving times.

“Aunt Bessie lived in the city in a beautiful home, but something had happened that summer; Uncle Frank was in Europe and could not come home, and Aunt Bessie and the children had to go into the country for a year.

“The ‘country’ was only seven miles away; first the train, then the horse cars, and, then, a two-mile drive.

“The wagons from the country came for the things Monday morning; there were two big loads (everything else had been sold), and in the country home we expected to find new and plain furniture that had already been sent from the stores.

“Monday the children and I had a hilarious time at dinner; moving times had begun, and I _did_ eat a piece of pie in my fingers. I was too full of the fun of things to notice that Aunt Bessie ate no dinner, and Elsie and I were teasing Rob in noisy play after dinner, and did not see that she was very white and scarcely spoke at all.

“‘Marion,’ she said at last, ‘I cannot conquer it; I’ve tried for half the day and all night; I cannot hold up my head another minute; one of my terrible headaches has come upon me. Jane will have to stay here with me and baby and Rob—do you think _you_ could—but no, you couldn’t—it’s too lonely for you—and I may not get there to-night.’

“‘Go to Sunny Plains alone—and have an adventure! Oh, Aunt Bessie! It’s too good to be true.’

“Unmindful of her headache I clapped my hands, and danced Rob up and down. It was all my own moving time.

“‘But, Marion, what would your mother think?’ she protested, weakly; ‘of course there are near neighbors—and you might take something to eat—and, if I do not get there, you must go across the way and stay all night. The old man who had the two white horses—you remember him, said he was our nearest neighbor, and he hoped we would be neighborly. He said he had a daughter about your age—you might ask her—if I _do_ let you go—to stay with you all night.’

“‘But, after all,’ looking at our trim, colored maid of all work, ‘perhaps Jane may better go and you stay with me. And—’

“‘Oh, no, ma’am, oh, no, indeed, ma’am,’ tremulously interrupted Jane (she was only two years older than I). ‘I couldn’t think of it; I should die of fright. I never lived in a wilderness, and I expect to give warning the first week, for I never can bear the country.’

“‘Now, Aunt Bessie, you see I have to go,’ I persuaded. ‘Jane can’t help being afraid—and I didn’t know how to be afraid—really, I don’t know what to be afraid of. Let Elsie go with me, and we’ll do everything ourselves—have the house all in order for you to-morrow morning, and have the most glorious time we ever had in our lives. My Cousin Jennie isn’t fifteen, and she stayed a week over alone in the country while Uncle and Auntie were away. Oh, _do_ let us go, Aunt Bessie.’

“‘Somebody must, I suppose,’ half consented Aunt Bessie, who was growing whiter every moment; ‘Elsie, are you brave enough to go with Marion?’

“‘Yes, mamma,’ said nine-year-old Elsie, in her grave little way, ‘_but I don’t know what the brave is for_.’

“‘I’m glad you don’t,’ smiled her mother. ‘Well, Jane—I hope I am not doing wrong—fix two boxes of lunch—and, you know you take the train to Paterson and then the horse-cars to Hanover—I will give you five dollars, Marion, you will have to take a carriage at Hanover—but you know all about it—you went with me to look at the house—and you know where to have the furniture put as I told you that day—and you can get things at the store—half a mile off—Jane, you will have to keep Rob and baby—Marion, I don’t know _what_ your mother will say—it’s well there was a load of things left so that I may have a bed to-night—’

“During this prologue my feet were dancing, and my fingers rubbing each other impatiently, I was so afraid she would end with a sufficient reason for not allowing us to go. I could not believe that we were really off until we sat in the train, each with a huge, stuffed lunch-box, and I with five dollars in my pocketbook and my head confused with ten thousand parting directions, among which was, many times repeated: ‘Be sure to _ask_ that girl to stay all night with you.’

“At the terminus at Hanover we got out and stood and looked around. Elsie was a little thing, but she was wise, and I liked to ask her advice.

“‘Aunt Bessie found a horse and a carriage at the blacksmith’s shop that day, didn’t she?’

“This was hardly asking advice, but Elsie brightened, and answered deliberately: ‘We walked on a canal-boat, then, to the other side, for the bridge was being built.’

“‘Then we are in the right place, for there’s the new bridge,’ I exclaimed, relieved, for I missed the canal boat we had that day made a bridge of.

“‘And we went down that way to the blacksmith’s shop,’ she said pointing in a familiar direction. Yes, I remembered that. The immensity of my undertaking was beginning to press upon me; I was glad I had brought Elsie.

“With a business-like air we crossed the bridge, and walked along a grass-bordered path to the blacksmith’s shop; there seemed to be two shops in the long building; before one open door a horse was being shod, before the other a group of men stood with hands in their pockets watching a fire that had died down into a red-hot circle—the circle looked like red-hot iron. As we waited for the horse to be harnessed and brought, Elsie and I stood across the street watching the red-hot iron ring—as large as a wagon wheel.

“Elsie looked as though she were forgetting everything in that red wonder, and I began to feel a trifle strange and lonely, for my little cousin was so self-absorbed that she was not much company.

“‘Hallo, there!’ called the blacksmith as a boy drove a two-seated wagon out from behind somewhere.

“With my best business air I asked the price before we stepped up into the wagon and replied, ‘Very well,’ to his modest one dollar.

“The drive was beautiful; Elsie looked and looked but scarcely spoke. But she did exclaim when we crossed the railroad, at the tiniest railroad station, we, or anybody else, ever saw.

“It was a brown shed, without a window even—the door stood wide open, there was no one within, no stove, no seats, no ticket office.

“‘Well, we are in the wilderness,’ I said aloud.

“And then, the ‘store.’ I wish I could tell you about that store. It was about as large as—a hen-coop, everything, everything in it. I got out and went in, for Aunt Bessie had asked me to inquire for letters which she had directed to be sent to Sunny Plains. The post-office was a rude desk and a few cubby-holes up on the wall above it; I saw a letter laid on a meal sack—this place behind the store seemed to be both post-office and granary.

“‘I’ll be down by and by—you are the new people, I suppose; I saw your things go by,’ remarked a pleasant young man behind the counter; ‘I’ll come for orders. I hope you will trade with us.’

“‘Thank you, I suppose so. And I wish you would bring some kerosene,’ I said, remembering that I must burn a lamp all night.