The Project Gutenberg EBook of Growing Up, by Jennie M. Drinkwater This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Growing Up A Story of the Girlhood of Judith Mackenzie Author: Jennie M. Drinkwater Release Date: March 24, 2013 [EBook #42408] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GROWING UP *** Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net 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 A...